French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–45: An oral history 9781784997410

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French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–45

Cultural History of Modern War Series editors Ana Carden-Coyne, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Bertrand Taithe Already published Carol Acton and Jane Potter  Working in a world of hurt: trauma and resilience in the narratives of medical personnel in warzones Julie Anderson  War, disability and rehabilitation in Britain: soul of a nation Rachel Duffett  The stomach for fighting: food and the soldiers of the First World War Christine E. Hallett  Containing trauma: nursing work in the First World War Jo Laycock  Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, ambiguity and intervention Chris Millington  From victory to Vichy: veterans in inter-war France Juliette Pattinson  Behind enemy lines: gender, passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War Chris Pearson  Mobilizing nature: The environmental history of war and militarization in Modern France Jeffrey S. Reznick  Healing the nation: soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War Jeffrey S. Reznick  John Galsworthy and disabled soldiers of the Great War: with an illustrated selection of his writings Michael Roper  The secret battle: emotional survival in the Great War Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy (eds.)  The silent morning: culture and memory after the Armistice Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird  Contesting home defence: men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War Wendy Ugolini  Experiencing war as the ‘enemy other’: Italian Scottish experience in World War II Laura Ugolini  Civvies: middle-class men on the English Home Front, 1914–18 Colette Wilson  Paris and the Commune, 1871–78: the politics of forgetting Series logo Centre for the Cultural History of War http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/history/research/cchw/

French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–45 An oral history

v Lindsey Dodd

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Lindsey Dodd 2016 The right of Lindsey Dodd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. BBC copyright material reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9704 1 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

Contents

page vi vii x

List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1 Telling stories

1 31

Part I:  Expecting bombing 2 Expecting war 3 Preparing for bombs

51 53 67

Part II:  Experiencing bombing

85

4 Being bombed 5 An evolving response 6 In the aftermath 7 The consequences of bombing

87 101 119 136

Part III:  Explaining bombing

165

8 Explaining bombing to the public 9 Explaining bombing to children 10 Friends, enemies and the wider war Evaluating bombing: a conclusion

167 183 196 211

Appendix: biographical profiles 226 Bibliography 231 Index 256

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Figures

1 Pre-war Défense Passive manual (n.d.): ‘French people – for your safety consult this brochure. The ABC of Défense Passive.’ Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt, 6H3. page 63 2 Interviewee Michel Jean-Bart survived the air raid of 10 April 1944 here, in his family home, rue Pierre Fosfer in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance (Lomme), near to Lille. Used with kind permission of the Jean-Bart family. 98 3 Interviewee Danielle Durville lived here in the rue François Garnier in Boulogne-Billancourt, until the building was destroyed in the air raid of 3 March 1942. Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt, 2 Fi 4302. 122 4 The first convoy of children evacuated from Boulogne-Billancourt arriving in Guéret in the Creuse in April 1943 after a long train journey. Archives départementales de la Creuse, 987W.110. 151 5 Anti-allied propaganda denouncing the RAF. The babies’ dummies that the airman holds are described as the ‘scalps’ he has taken. Archives départementales du Nord, 1W.4696.8. 170 6 Memorial in Hellemmes, near to Lille. The inscription reads: ‘The commune of Hellemmes to the civilian victims of the bombing, 1940–1944.’ Author’s photograph. 222

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of the institutions and individuals who have made the writing and the publication of this book possible. Without the interviewees, who so generously allowed me to come to their homes and shared their memories with me, this research would not have been possible. I hope that, despite the linguistic boundary that comes from publishing in English, this is, to some extent, their book too. I will not thank each by name here. However, I am indebted to them, and have happy memories of the hours I spent in their houses, where they gave me a stronger sense of the value of this research with every cup of coffee and every biscuit offered: their stories matter, and it mattered to them that I wanted to listen. Some of these interviewees have sadly passed away since I conducted this research. Some relatives have contacted me to say how pleased they are to have their stories, recorded and given back on CDs. I received an email in February 2012 from a relative of one interviewee telling me that his father-in-law had a fond memory of your visit, and he mentioned you from time to time. He is now sharing that memory with other members of our family who were present of the time of that air raid [in March 1942]. You can be sure that you have a warm supporter watching over you from beyond.

This gives some indication of the value of doing research into the lives of ordinary people, not only for historians trying to understand the complexity of the past, but for those who lived through it and their families. My doctoral research, on which this book is based, was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of a project which ran between 2007 and 2010: ‘Bombing, States and People in Western Europe, 1940–1945’. I  am enormously grateful for the many opportunities this v vii v

Acknowledgements funding brought. I would like to thank all members of the project team, particularly Richard Overy, Andrew Knapp, Claudia Baldoli and Marc Wiggam. I was lucky to work with such a creative and talented group of scholars as part of my induction into this profession. I could not have asked for a better PhD supervisor than Andrew Knapp, whose support, encouragement and enthusiasm still endure, as well as his faith in my ability and my methods. I learnt an enormous amount from him, and am also very grateful for the generosity with which he shared his own research with me. I owe my second supervisor Martin Parsons a great deal too; his insistent advocacy for the plight of children in war introduced me to this important area of research, in which I continue to work. I would also like to thank Robert Gildea and Hilary Footitt, who examined my thesis and gave me the confidence to believe that it was publishable. I thank the Department of French Studies at the University of Reading, where I spent three happy years conducting this research, as well as the History subject area in the School of Music, Humanities and Media at the University of Huddersfield, where I have worked since 2012. My colleagues are dedicated and impressive in so many ways, and I have learnt a lot from them all. I should also make mention of the enthusiasm of the undergraduates I have been teaching at Huddersfield who make this job much more enjoyable. My interest in the Vichy era began during my A-Levels through the wonderful teaching of Sylvia Mills at Charters School. This accounted in part for my choice of the University of Sussex for my undergraduate degree, where, like so many others, I was inspired by Rod Kedward’s ‘Fall of France’ module. While writing my undergraduate dissertation on the École Nationale des Cadres d’Uriage, I became intrigued by the complexity of oral evidence, and as a result took the MA in Life History Research: Oral History and Mass-Observation at the University of Sussex. Under the dynamic supervision of Al Thomson and Dorothy Sheridan, I  developed a genuine excitement for the subtlety, warmth, depth and scope of oral history. I would like to thank the anonymous readers of this manuscript, as well as Joanna Bornat for her insightful suggestions and for sharing unpublished work with me. Special thanks go to my colleague Rebecca Gill who gave me constructive criticism and sensible advice about my writing. This is a better book because of her. I am grateful to the team at Manchester University Press for taking on this project, and for providing guidance and help. My appreciation v viii v

Acknowledgements also extends to the helpfulness of archivists at municipal and departmental archives in Boulogne-Billancourt, Lille and Brest; in particular, un grand merci à Françoise Bédoussac at the Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt whose interest in my research across the years has remained constant and most encouraging. Thanks are also due to the BBC for permission to publish extracts from the wartime French Service radio scripts and to Miriam Cendrars for permission to make use of her radio scripts. I also thank Hervé Cadiou and Henri Descamps for their invaluable assistance finding interviewees in Brest and Lille. For friendship and much-needed light relief during the years spent conducting this research, my thanks go to Harper Ray, Melanie Duarte, Rachel Callender, Julia Suffield and Daniel Cummins; and for good friendships that have sustained me more recently, Janette Martin and Duncan Stone. Heide Kunzelmann and Valeska Hass have given wise and warm counsel and good breakfasts. I also thank my very dear COBs wholeheartedly: Rhian Hepple, Sarah Hillier, Stephanie Irwin, Ali Kurn, Emma Reddy, Andrea Saunders and Wendy Shepherd. And I could not have done this without Clare Forder’s constant friendship and advice. Finally, I  thank my family. My doctoral thesis was dedicated to my grandmother, Winifred Grimes, who also knew what it was like to be bombed. She sadly died before this book could appear. Since childhood, my brother Antony Dodd has had a big influence on me; I thank him and admire his work enormously. I have dedicated this book to my parents, Ann and John Dodd, who have been unfailingly supportive of everything I do and have done, and gave me the means to achieve happiness in my life. I am profoundly grateful for their conversation, creativity and curiosity, as well as their love. To conclude, my heartfelt thanks go to Benjamin Bâcle, who just makes everything better.

v ix v

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Abbreviations

ADBR  Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône ADC  Archives départementales du Calvados ADCr  Archives départementales de la Creuse ADIV  Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine ADL  Archives départementales de la Loire ADLA  Archives départementales de la Loire-Atlantique ADM  Archives départementales du Morbihan ADN  Archives départementales du Nord AMBB  Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt AMCB  Archives municipales et communautaires de Brest AML  Archives municipales de Lille AMM  Archives municipales de Marseille AN  Archives nationales de France BBC WAC British Broadcasting Corporation Written Archives at Caversham DCA  Défense contre avions (anti-aircraft fire) JO  Journal Officiel PTSD  post-traumatic stress disorder QHPEF Quart d’Heure des Petits Enfants de France (Fifteen Minutes for French Children) RAF  Royal Air Force SALS Service d’Aide aux Localités Sinistrés (Aid Service for Bombed-Out Areas) SIPEG Service Interministériel de Protection contre les Événements de Guerre (Interministerial Protection Service against the Events of War) TNA  The National Archives of the United Kingdom USAAF  United States Air Army Forces vxv

Introduction

Édith Denhez: My mother had to go out. We didn’t live in the countryside, so although we had ration cards we had very little bread, very little of anything. So she took her bike, and she said ‘I’m going to get us some food’. My older brother, he went to a Catholic school in the town centre. It was a Thursday, the air raid (because for us, there’s only one air raid, that one on the Thursday). So it was Thursday, and there was no school, but there was a tea party organised by [my brother’s] school, and my brother wanted to go, but my mother didn’t want him to. She said to Jacques, ‘You can’t go to the tea party. I don’t want you going out like that, all alone’. And she rode off on her bike. And then Jacques, he sneaked out. And I ask myself even today, and I ask myself often, it’s a question I ask myself all the time: did he leave while my mother was still at home, and we hid it from her? It’s a question I ask myself all the time, I don’t know if my sister asks herself, because I feel really very guilty, and that’s not right, to feel guilty because Jacques went out when he shouldn’t have done. But I wish I knew. He wasn’t allowed to go out, and I should have said to Mum ‘Jacques has gone out!’ If she was still there. But I don’t remember now.1

Édith Denhez’s older brother Jacques was killed in April 1944, one of around 60,000 civilians in France to lose their lives under the Allied bombs during the Second World War.2 Jacques was just twelve years old. The family’s home town of Cambrai in northern France was bombed as part of the Transportation Plan of spring 1944, which targeted the rail network. This preventative campaign was intended to hamper German reinforcements when the Allies landed on D-Day, but it also caused a large number of French civilian bombing casualties. Churchill was rightly concerned: Allied success depended on a friendly French population. While the Transportation Plan proved the severest test of civilian morale under aerial attack, bombs had been falling on France since 1940. North and south, east and west, coastline, town and village: so many places knew v1v

Introduction the sound of sirens, the whistle of bombs; so many people understood their impact. Although this impact was violent and deadly, it was also evidence that the Allies fought on, that the bombers grew stronger and that liberation was coming. Édith can only partially remember the sequence of events leading up to the moment Jacques left the house. She has replayed them in her mind for 65 years, sharing them only with her sister. Her husband Jean heard them with me for the first time in our interview in April 2009. Historian Jean-François Muracciole has described the Allied bombing as ‘the last “black hole” in French collective memory of the Second World War’.3 While bombing is prominent and meaningful in private memories of childhood survivors, and in family and local memory, he rightly notes that its victims have been ‘largely ignored’ at a national level. This stands in stark contrast to the British experience of the Blitz, which acts as a lieu de mémoire and the backbone of national identity emerging from the Second World War. In France, five times more people were killed by bombing than were shot in German reprisals for acts of resistance, yet les fusilés are commemorated in plaques and statues across France. Resistance and collaboration have dominated versions of ‘the dark years’ in France for so long that bombing has, in many cases, slipped out of view. Bombing neither acts a lieu de mémoire nor exists inside those ‘vectors of memory’ – the ‘conduits’ of performed memory, such as film, commemoration or public debates – which carry memory forward into the present.4 The uncommemorated victims of bombing are not just its dead. They include those injured or made homeless, or those bereaved like Édith and her family. Yet the absence of a public, national discourse on the Allied bombing of France has left people like Édith with unresolved memories:  how can she find comfort, reason or public respect for Jacques’ death and for events that blighted her childhood if they are scarcely acknowledged? National commemoration can help heal wounds, and the wounds of bombing are only now beginning to be dressed. The disastrous French military campaign of May–June 1940 saw 1.5  million French soldiers taken prisoner, and the upheaval of perhaps eight million Belgian and French civilians fleeing invasion. The eighty-four-year-old war hero Marshal Philippe Pétain became leader of an authoritarian, undemocratic French State after the Third Republic committed suicide on 10 July 1940. The Armistice with Hitler that withdrew France from combat also fixed extortionate reparations payments, vastly restricted military capacity and divided the country into the northern Occupied Zone and the southern ‘Free’ Zone. While the Germans v2v

Introduction plundered French industry and agriculture, from the spa town of Vichy Pétain began his National Revolution. Met enthusiastically in conservative quarters, Pétain’s project, with its home-grown anti-Semitism, would progressively draw France deeper into collaboration with Germany. Key to occupation and collaboration was economic exploitation: infrastructure, industry and seaboard were harnessed to the Nazi war machine and thus became targets for bombs. As Pétain lost control at the helm, France was steered by others, with an increasing ideological commitment to fascist and Nazi ideals resulting in the deportation of around 76,000 Jews from France, most of whom were murdered. Alongside collaboration, resistance developed: equally home-grown, and equally a mixture of the pragmatic and the ideological. Whether fighting against occupation, authoritarianism, collaboration, forced labour, anti-Semitism or combinations thereof, both the internal resistance in France and Charles de Gaulle’s Free French, acting first from London and then from Algeria, developed piecemeal, but grew in the latter years of the period. Collaboration and resistance continue to form the dominant narratives of understanding war in France, although new works such as Daniel Lee’s study of Jewish youth in Vichy France explicitly seek to loosen the historiographical ties that these narratives have bound around versions of the past.5 With continental Europe overrun by the Wehrmacht, bombing became the sole means for Britain to continue offensive warfare. The Allied bombing of France is little discussed in France, and it is no better known in Britain or America. The complex moral choices involved in attacking a non-combatant nation and the ambiguous nature of the Allies’ relationship with France have clouded over this aspect of the war in the air. The first targets in France from July 1940 were German barges amassing on the coast in preparation to invade Britain, and airfields in northern France. Throughout the war, RAF (Royal Air Force) Bomber Command bombed a range of French targets in line with campaigns taking place elsewhere. For example, the Battle of the Atlantic led to attacks first on German surface raiders docked at Brest until February 1942, and then heavy raids on the Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux in early 1943, which intended to destroy the U-boat bases. The RAF and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) attacked industrial targets across France, including the southern zone from November 1942, which were manufacturing or subcontracting for the Third Reich. A fifth of the bombs that fell on France were aimed at V-weapon launch sites in northern France. Rail installations were attacked throughout the war, v3v

Introduction and the campaign intensified in advance of D-Day as the Transportation Plan made its mark. Bombers also provided support for ground troops on and after 6 June 1944, striking towns and villages across Normandy. Finally, during the period of liberation, massive air raids were used to force the surrender of ‘nests’ of Nazis, ferociously holding onto the port towns. Eighty per cent of all raids on France took place during 1944. Yet for some, bombing had been part of daily life since 1940. The study of everyday life in France during the Vichy years is a field still growing. For example, recent work by Shannon L.  Fogg, Nicole Dombrowski Risser and Julia S. Torrie is testament to a growing interest in the political dimensions of everyday life. Torrie’s work in particular shifts the discussion significantly towards civilian rather than daily life: it recognises that much of the French population lived in a war zone for part or all of the period. All three historians concern themselves with the ways in which the French population acted when confronted with the repercussions of the continuing war: agency existed and mattered, and civilian demands for protection and aid demonstrate a growth in popular consciousness of individual and family rights vis-à-vis their government at war. In studies of daily life that also include Dominique Veillon’s Vivre et survivre en France, 1939–1947 or Hanna Diamond’s work on the 1940 exodus, fear is omnipresent, but so are coping, ingenuity, persistence and adaptation: those living the experience are actors in its evolution.6 Robert Gildea rightly noted that French civilians were ‘more than traumatised souls lining up for bread or dodging bombs’.7 His mention of bombs here is important: in all these studies of civilian life, bombing serves as a backdrop, but has never been at the centre of scholarly analysis. Since 2007, Andrew Knapp’s meticulous documentation of the Allied bombing of France, its mechanisms, intentions and consequences in French society has led the new turn towards understanding events that had previously seemed peripheral to the main action. His analysis, both overarching and minute, of archives across France provides a framework in which to situate individual experience.8 In this book, I  examine the Allied bombing of France as experienced on the ground to understand its impact on the lives it touched, particularly children’s lives. Total war brought children into contact with war’s aggression and violence as never before. How were children in France during the Second World War affected by bombs? How has it marked the adults they became? What was the nature of this bombing? Were people prepared for it? How did they adapt to it? How did people tolerate and survive the chaos devastation brought? Which children understood why it was happening to them? v4v

Introduction How do survivors view bombs and bombers today? And why does this subject have such a low profile in public discourse on the Second World War in France, and yet a strong place in personal and local memory? To answer these questions, I examined archival material from municipal and departmental archives from the towns of Boulogne-Billancourt, Brest and Lille. These archives, full of reports, circulars, letters and posters, reveal the administrative framework within which events occurred and illuminate the responses and actions of municipality, département and state. But they contain few voices of bombed people, and none of children. In 2009 I interviewed thirty-six French people who were bombed as children, most of them from the three case-study towns and some from elsewhere; these interviews provide a way into micro-level responses to and retrospective interpretations of bombing in the lives of ordinary people. Édith Denhez’s story shows us that every one of the 60,000 deaths was meaningful: a real person, a real family and a real, very powerful and lasting impact. She and her sister sheltered in terror from the heavy air raid in a neighbour’s cellar. In the shock of the aftermath We waited for Mum, my sister and I. And when she came back, she said ‘Where’s Henri?’ Well, Henri was with the neighbours, so she went to fetch him. ‘And Jacques?’ We didn’t know. Evening came, and Jacques didn’t come home. My dad was away at that time, I  can’t remember why. My mother took her three remaining children, and she took us, oh, I don’t know, about two or three kilometres from home, to my Aunt Lucie’s. On the road, she stopped everyone – and this is etched on my memory – ‘Have you seen a little lad, blond with glasses?’ She said that to everyone we met. Well, we didn’t really understand. We stayed one night with our aunt, and then she took us to her sister-in-law’s house, who agreed to look after us. She took us three there, and still no Jacques. Then one of the priests from the school, he was helping to clear up the bombed houses near the railway depot and he recognised Jacques, who’d been killed there. He was with thirteen other people. And after, I heard that – I didn’t know at the time, not straight away – his fingertips were all cut because he’d been trying to scrabble through a gap into the cellar of the house next door.

Jacques died, a child fighting to survive; Édith survived, a child whose life was irrevocably changed, and a woman whose memories haunt her. But why should this study prioritise children? First, bombing brought offensive warfare directly into the home, and it affected children in specific ways, not least when they were evacuated alone. Second, children are absent from a great deal of research on wartime France, in contrast to elsewhere; this study is thus a step towards a better understanding of v5v

Introduction their experiences. And third, these war children are still alive today and affected by what happened. They carry the memory of this war, and are sometimes vocal, but have often remained silent about a formative period of their lives made shameful through the acts of adults in the past.

Children, bombing and France During the Second World War in France, children comprised just over a quarter of the population.9 I have taken ‘children’ to mean those aged sixteen and younger. Until 1941, the E, J1 and J2 ration categories only covered those up to and including thirteen-year-olds; fourteen and older was categorised as A  (adult). From 1941, as a result of ongoing nutritional research, the new J3 ration category was introduced for those aged fourteen to twenty-one. While wartime rationing as well as compulsory school attendance ended childhood at fourteen, some youngsters remained in education, in apprenticeships, or in low-paid work that kept them at home. They were tied into family finances as dependents or contributors to a group budget. The age of penal majority was eighteen, but a person was considered ‘responsible’ for their actions from sixteen. ‘Child’ is not a simple category, but shifts according to class, geography and gender, as well as over time. The history of childhood and the history of children in the past are different, but related. Childhood is a cultural construction of a period of the lifecycle. It is more accessible for historians as it leaves traces through which the external elements that shaped children’s worlds can be discerned, such as education, children’s literature, child health policies, toys and games, childrearing guidance and so on; all are created by adults for or about children. They show the place of children within society; indeed, childhood is often used to comment on adult society, politics and ideology.10 Yet studying being a child in the past presents many obstacles, largely because children leave few written traces of their own. I have gathered versions of childhood through oral history, but the people I interviewed were, of course, adults. The twentieth century’s total wars thrust their way into the domestic space, affecting children as never before. Bombing is just one potentially traumatising trigger in war. Trauma has a number of symptoms specific to children, which alter according to the child’s stage of development. In children under five, traumatic events may provoke anxious attachment behaviour and a loss of recently learnt behaviours, such as toilet training or speech. From around five or seven years old to about twelve, v6v

Introduction other responses begin to show. These children can identify with physical pain in others, and are more likely to have psychosomatic responses. Eth and Pynoos remark upon the ‘devastating consequences on personality of trauma’ during the adolescent years, where feelings of rage, shame and betrayal can lead to self-destructive behaviour.11 Trauma has far-reaching consequences in children’s lives, and war is a mass of traumatising possibilities. The historical study of children in war has developed more fully in countries other than France, covering different angles, often determined by national war experiences. In Britain, for example, evacuation looms large. Other forms of displacement and separation, child health and welfare reforms, and the fate of children of collaborators or children born of occupation are common themes in war child studies.12 Tara Zahra’s transnational study of children in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War provides a useful analysis of the impact of that war on Europe’s children.13 It joins the growing body of work on child-saving in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on children in ideological relation to family and nation.14 A great deal of research has been undertaken into child survivors of the Holocaust. Yet it is in Germany, with a complicated relationship to its own history, where Jewish children suffered excessively, and gentile children were part of the perpetrator society, but also suffered from bombing, displacement, deprivation, parental separation and/or fatherlessness, that ‘war children’ have had most exposure. Subjects for psychologists and historians, and popular with publishers, the Kriegskinder have had a public presence over the past twenty-five years.15 Yet French children also lived through bombing, persecution, displacement, separation and deprivation, but their experiences are less visible. Sometimes historians have used policy towards young people to shed light on the ideology and policies of the Vichy regime. Women’s history has provided insight into the structures of childhood, although children then feature as secondary to their mothers, the concern being rather with gender roles or the impact of child-bearing and rearing on women’s political status.16 Studies of Vichy and youth policy have been conducted by Halls, Giolitto and Dereymez, and most recently Lee, yet we must be wary here, as ‘youth’ is that group between children and adults.17 Nicholas Atkin’s work has taught us about Vichy’s education policies and Rémy Handourtzel’s about school, while Judith Proud illustrated some of Vichy’s literary propaganda for children, and Penny Brown sketched out the main themes of children’s literature during this period.18 These v7v

Introduction studies tell us about adults’ intentions not children’s actions. Laura Lee Downs’ work on children’s holiday camps includes some qualitative material but concentrates more on structure and policy; she has also used the 1939 child evacuation in France to reveal attitudes towards childrearing.19 Similarly, given the broad scope of her work, Torrie’s comparison of civilian evacuation in Germany and France limits treatment of French children’s experience to a few pages that hint at the complexity and range of schemes set up for children, but cannot be comprehensive.20 Throughout, we learn what was done to children, not what children did. Very few scholarly studies have treated the subjectivity of individual experience, although one exception is Sarah Fishman’s The Battle for Children.21 While her emphasis is on the continuities in juvenile justice policy between Vichy and the post-war era, a biographical and case-study approach focuses attention on unknown historical actors themselves, and suggests the ways in which individual children and adolescents experienced defeat and war in France. Children’s agency within society is limited; clearly they do not make policy. Yet scholarship across the disciplines, including history, recognises now that children are agents. Although their life-worlds are limited by lack of knowledge or experience, their activities, culture and voices make a valid and useful contribution to our understanding. As social actors, they are involved in ‘expressive and meaning-making activities’ in relation to the social and cultural worlds in which they live and must be seen as ‘important historical co-creators of everyday life’.22 Like other civilians, they coped and adapted, were persistent and ingenious. The adult tendency to conceptualise children solely as passive dependents refuses to acknowledge them as human beings with individuality, interiority, agency and rights. Nonetheless, plenty of memoirs about French children’s wartime lives exist, many emerging in the publishing boom of the late 1990s and 2000s. Books such as Nicole Roux’s C’est la guerre les enfants or Paul Le Melledo’s Itinéraire d’un Gavroche lorientais offer moving and entertaining insights into personal experiences. Similar interest is provided by the collection of short first-person narratives, Maréchal nous voilà…, in which 27 adults, Jewish and gentile, recount moments from childhood.23 Another small collection, Paroles d’Etoiles, presents memories of Jewish children, and focuses – understandably – on persecution rather than building a broader picture of children’s lives in war. While still under-studied, Jewish children in Vichy France  – persecuted, hidden, exiled, deported, rescued, orphaned  – have received more scholarly attention than non-Jewish children;24 Anna Wylegała has noted a similar tendency across the v8v

Introduction historiography.25 To date, there exists no systematic analysis of all children’s experiences in France during the Second World War.26 Vichy marked the triumph of the pro-family and pro-natalist policies that had driven French conservatives since the late nineteenth century. The 1939 Family Code had enshrined children’s position at the centre of the nation. Children were the essential components of the right kind of families – large families – that did not just make up the nation: they were the nation, its wealth and power nascent in its children. Large families were also the training ground for hierarchy, sacrifice and devotion, which children had to learn in order to subordinate themselves to the collective needs of the family, thus of the nation. Vichy continued the pro-family pro-natalist policy of its predecessors, but, as with many of its projects, family policies were contradictory and unworkable in wartime.27 Children became a battleground  – like women or welfare  – for different ideological armies, and a vehicle for their combative propaganda. Children’s status in society is indicated by Vichy’s attitude to abortion:  from February 1942, abortion was no longer a crime against the individual, but a crime against society, ‘race’ and state. Research on Vichy, family and community illustrates the importance attached to children as objects, but we are no closer to seeing them as subjects. Where does bombing fit into French children’s experiences of war? It clearly mattered, as Cécile Bramé from the naval port of Brest explained: I understood the progress of the war by the force of the bombs. You see, the first bombs, well, they scared us a bit, of course, and we saw houses destroyed, we’d go into our cellars. We thought it was safe because we had four storeys. And then when they said ‘You should go down to the school cellar, it’s got a concrete roof ’, well then we said ‘It’s getting dangerous’. After that, we used to go to the tunnels under the ramparts. We’d go in the upper part, covered with a lot of earth above, and there we felt safe – we felt so safe we’d sing during the raids. We had to keep our spirits up! But the progression continued. We needed concrete shelters. We went to tunnels twenty metres down, and I think it was at that moment that we started to be scared. We were scared. I think there was the fear of the Germans, the fear of the bombs – those were the things – and for children, there was a third fear:  being separated from your parents at the moment when the bombs were falling. You had the feeling that if you had your parents next to you, you were protected.

Bombs were central to her life during this period, and ranked alongside the Germans as a source of anxiety. Her point about separation is also crucial in relation to bombing:  like many French children, Cécile was v9v

Introduction evacuated away from her family. The distress of separation, particularly as bombs continued to fall on home, was a key vector of fear for children. Despite the mass of research into the civilian experience of air war in Europe, few enquiries deal directly with the effects of bombing on children, compared with those of evacuation. Indeed, sometimes one is at a loss to know what the children were being evacuated from. While Schweitzer and Thompson concluded that ‘evacuation seems to have led to more psychological problems than the air raids’, the raids themselves always occurred within a broader context.28 Cécile’s words link bombing and separation explicitly, and it must be emphasised that separation following trauma is a different phenomenon to separation without having already witnessed or experienced the violence of conflict. A large-scale historical and psychological study of the 1943 Hamburg firestorm on survivors born between 1932 and 1942 has shown little evidence of enduring trauma.29 Why should this be? The circumstantial mediation of potential trauma is clear in the chapters that follow, and will be shown to affect memories of bombing and perceptions of its impact on individual lives. But we cannot conclude that bombing did not and does not affect children. A  psychological study in Gaza in 2006 found that bombing significantly increased behavioural and emotional problems in pre-school children.30 In the 1940s in Britain there was medical interest in the bombing and evacuation of children; equivalent research was not carried out in France during the war, which may account in part for the absence of bombing in public discourse. In one of few contemporary studies that exist, in 1943 Mercier and Despert accounted for and regretted the lack of psychological attention paid to civilians: For obvious reasons, psychiatry receded into the background. The acuteness of immediate physiological needs, the scarcity of doctors, drugs and gasoline, all were factors which contributed toward modifying the character of medical practice in time of war even as related to the civilian population … no systematic study was possible.31

Back in Britain, in a 1941 study of 8,000 schoolchildren, Frank Bodman found that only 4 per cent showed ‘strain’ following bombing, either psychological or psychosomatic, the former more likely in younger children, the latter among eleven- to fourteen-year-olds. He concluded that ‘the youngest age group is most vulnerable’, while older children often saw raids ‘as an adventure’.32 Edward Glover suggested that children over two years could understand the components of bombing, writing that while children were afraid, ‘their fear is neither as universal nor as overwhelming v 10 v

Introduction as has been expected’.33 In their nurseries research, Dorothy Burlingham and Anna Freud discovered that during traumatic experiences, the presence of a parent (or trusted carer) reduced psychological disturbance.34 Charlotte J. Carey-Trefzer noted that air raids triggered the largest number of reactions, but evacuation created ‘deeper and more persisting damage’. Bombing and evacuation were linked: what undermined the healing of ‘bombing neuroses’ was ‘immediate evacuation alone after the shock’.35 The key is in the combination, as Cécile Bramé’s words confirm.

Three towns under the bombs Whether or not children were bombed or evacuated depended on where they lived. This study compares three French towns with different experiences of bombing. In her study of the liberation era, Megan Koreman uses a three-town comparative approach to great effect, emphasising the multiplicity of local experiences that undermine the possibility of constructing a single ‘French’ history of events; this regional focus has often been used by historians of wartime France.36 Each town used in this book has a kind of representativity. For example, Brest has much in common with other Atlantic naval ports bombed for the U-boat bases, and the coastal ports more generally, Boulogne-Billancourt represents industrial target towns, and the heavy raid on Lille-Délivrance in April 1944 can be seen as representative of the Transportation Plan bombing campaign of spring 1944. I sought geographically contrasting towns – Lille on the Germans’ invasion route, Brest so far distant – and with different bombing chronologies:  Brest was bombed regularly but not heavily at first, while Boulogne-Billancourt was bombed only four times, but heavily. Some of the towns’ specificities have no corresponding referent in the others, and therefore the uniqueness is important. All three were north of the demarcation line, therefore none were ‘off limits’ to Allied bombers – as towns in the southern ‘Free Zone’ were until the Germans occupied that area too from November 1942.

Boulogne-Billancourt Boulogne-Billancourt is a suburb to the west of Paris, tucked inside a large meander of the River Seine. It was born in 1926 when the town of Boulogne-sur-Seine was renamed Boulogne-Billancourt, giving its populous southerly district Billancourt greater status. The biggest employer had long been the laundry trade, but that changed when v 11 v

Introduction Louis Renault began making engines there in his garden shed in 1898. In time he owned the whole riverbank at Billancourt, the Ile Séguin and numerous plots elsewhere. His manufacturing expanded, from automobiles to other forms of transport, motors and military and aeronautical engineering. On the eve of the Second World War, the Billancourt factories employed 32,600 workers; Renault was France’s third biggest car manufacturer, behind Citroën and Peugeot, but the leader in lorries.37 Renault was not alone in setting up shop here. During the nineteenth century, manufacturers of enamel, ceramics, chemicals, jam, candles and perfume had jostled for space;38 by the twentieth, cars and aeroplanes dominated, but other modern industries – film and telephone – also arrived.39 André Morizet became the mayor of Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1919.40 He was one of several reforming suburban mayors influenced by the municipal socialism of Édouard Vaillant.41 He embarked upon a series of welfare improvements, and gave the town a sense of dynamism and modernity, and by 1939 Boulogne-Billancourt had around 97,000 inhabitants.42 Morizet remained mayor until his death at the end of March 1942. Despite being a socialist, he was not removed from his post by the Vichy authorities but remained, supervised by the prefect of the Seine – Charles Magny from October 1940, René Bouffet from August 1942.43 He was reputedly part of the local resistance, but also managed to maintain functional relations with the Germans. As Wouters has shown, the ‘marginalised’ position of mayors within the wartime French administration meant that, as long as they kept a low profile, they could focus on the everyday concerns of the municipality, such as food supply.44 Morizet’s successor, Robert Colmar, was a Vichy appointee, yet had a good reputation in the town because of his clear concern for local people.45 Boulogne-Billancourt was bombed four times. In January 1942, the British War Cabinet had discussed bombing key industrial targets in France.46 The aim  – military and psychological  – was threefold:  (a)  to destroy the production capacity of factories working for Germany; (b) to indicate ‘the fate which awaits those industries in occupied territory which continue to work for the enemy’; and (c) to show the French people ‘the offensive power of our bomber force’ in order to boost their morale. Billancourt would be first, and a good opportunity for ‘a full-scale trial of the flare techniques’.47 The lure for the bombers was Renault’s factories, which were supplying lorries to the Wehrmacht.48 Tanks and machine guns were being repaired by German workmen in the Renault workshop near the Pont de Sèvres, which Daimler-Benz had taken over.49 v 12 v

Introduction For two hours on the night of 3 March 1942, 235 aircraft bombed the Renault factory. The raid trialled the RAF’s new navigational aid Gee and the absence of anti-aircraft fire allowed bombing from a low level, at 300 to 1,500 metres. Around 540 bombs were dropped in three waves, 45 per cent of which fell in the target area. It was, according to the director of bombing operations, ‘the heaviest concentration in time, height and space that we have ever achieved’, and believed to have been ‘completely successful […] with comparatively small proportionate civilian damage in the surrounding residential areas’.50 Yet the attack caused more civilian casualties than any previous RAF air raid, with 371 killed in Boulogne-Billancourt, 317 injured, and hundreds more casualties in neighbouring suburbs.51 Furthermore, the structural damage to the factory was misleading:  the lorry production section was unscathed, and the machine tools were mostly intact. Production recommenced and increased, peaking in September 1942.52 In 1943, Boulogne-Billancourt was bombed three more times, by the USAAF. These raids were more successful in terms of material damage to the factories; production continued but its rate slowed. The raid of 4 April 1943 used a different technique: in just three minutes during the afternoon, eighty-eight bombers dropped 650 bombs from a very high altitude, of which 41 per cent hit the target. The raid left 327 dead and more than 500 injured in Boulogne-Billancourt alone.53 The raids of September 1943 formed a two-phase assault, the first on 3 September targeting part of the Renault factory situated near the town’s border with the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. It killed four people in Boulogne-Billancourt, injured ten more, and killed eighty-two people elsewhere. On 15 September, sixty-one planes bombed the same locations. Out of 291 killed, five were from Boulogne-Billancourt, where there were also thirty-one injuries. Only 21 per cent of the September bombs hit their targets.54 Overall, 700 people were identified as having been killed in Boulogne-Billancourt, although hundreds more corpses were unrecognisable. Twenty-five per cent of dwellings were rendered uninhabitable, leaving tens of thousands homeless.55 Before moving on, it is worth introducing some of the interviewees from Boulogne-Billancourt whose words will be frequently cited in the pages to come. I interviewed eleven people from Boulogne-Billancourt from different backgrounds, reflecting the industrial and commercial sides of the town. Highly articulate brothers Claude and Michel Thomas feature prominently across the chapters that follow. Their parents owned a furniture shop in the centre of the town. The family was well-off, interested in current affairs, and the two boys diligent with school work v 13 v

Introduction and staunch supporters of the Allied cause. Christian de la Bachellerie, Christian Solet and Madame Th also had parents who ran small businesses. Michèle Martin lived on the border of the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris; her memories tell the story of a little disabled girl, whose polio had left her less able physically to manage the demands of life under the bombs. From the industrial parts of the town, with families working in laundry or for Renault, were Robert Belleuvre and Bernard Bauwens, among others. These two men spoke with great emotion of the heavy air raids they underwent as young teenagers; both were affiliated to youth groups that forced them to contribute their services in the aftermath of an air raid, Robert standing as a guard of honour over the dead, Bernard clearing bombsites. The broader Parisian experience is reflected in the words of Max Potter who lived in the railway district of La Chapelle, near the Gare du Nord. Max’s mother was left alone to look after her son and daughter while her English husband, a Daily Mail journalist, was interned. In the Paris region, these children and young adolescents were not bombed regularly. However, the impact of what they did suffer from 1942 onwards is clear in narratives that reverberate with the shock of such unexpected attacks on the French capital.

Brest Perched near the end of the Léon peninsula, the port of Brest looks over a vast natural harbour. A 1,500-metre-wide bottleneck, through which all maritime traffic must pass, has protected Brest from seaborne invasion ever since its establishment as a naval port in the seventeenth century. Richelieu cannot have imagined that 300 years later, devastation would come from the sky not the sea. Since the construction of the naval port and the arsenal along both banks of the River Penfeld, and Vauban’s fortification of the town, military activity has dominated Brest.56 ‘Greater Brest’ comprises, on the left bank of the Penfeld stretching down to the commercial port, Brest intra-muros, to the north, the commune of Lambézellec, and east, Saint-Marc. On the right bank are the working-class district of Recouvrance, and the commune Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon.57 When the Germans arrived in 1940, the capture of many prisoners of war, plus civilian flight, left a population in Greater Brest of around 118,500.58 Thereafter, numbers were swollen by German soldiers and workers for the Todt organisation, the Nazi engineering consortium responsible from 1941 for building the ‘Atlantic Wall’ along the coasts of France, the Netherlands and Belgium. v 14 v

Introduction Radical socialist Dr Victor Le Gorgeu was elected mayor of Brest in 1929, and senator for Finistère in 1930.59 He was one of the eighty parliamentarians who refused to vote full powers to Pétain and later refused to swear allegiance to the Marshal. By February 1942, the municipal council had been dissolved and replaced by a ‘Special Delegation’. Its president was the former mayor of Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon Victor Eusen, who remained popular until his death in the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter, which exploded in a tragic accident in 1944; he, like André Morizet, protected his citizens to the best of his ability by negotiating with the Germans and with Vichy.60 In April 1941, the Germans set up a new ‘forbidden zone’ about twenty kilometres deep, running from Dunkirk to Hendaye, south of Biarritz, which included Brest.61 Citizens faced ever-increasing restrictions on their activities, most obviously the curfew from 10pm to 4am. Many were stubbornly non-compliant and the town as a whole paid through the curtailment of civil liberties. The bombing of the town divides into distinct periods. The first  – July 1940 until the arrival of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in March 1941  – saw regular but quite light bombing, and forty-seven people killed.62 After the warships arrived, bombing intensified and increasing losses of Allied Atlantic shipping made France’s western ports a priority for Bomber Command.63 Half of Bomber Command’s total bomb weight during March and early April 1941 fell upon them. In two months, 1,655 tons of bombs were dropped on the warships docked at Brest – or rather, near them, for there were almost no direct hits, yet enough damage was done to put them out of action. They escaped from Brest in February 1942.64 Between January 1941 and February 1942, Bomber Command carried out 25 major raids (of more than fifty bombers) and numerous smaller ones on Brest.65 During this period, 245 Brestois were killed in air raids, and 397 were seriously injured.66 Towards the end of 1942, Bomber Command turned its attention to the submarine bases along the Atlantic coast of France, in Brest, Lorient, La Pallice, Bordeaux and St Nazaire. The extraordinary decision to area bomb Lorient was taken by the War Cabinet in January 1943. Area bombing – known more widely as ‘carpet bombing’ – was usually reserved for the German enemy.67 However, the Todt organisation’s concrete submarine hangars proved impenetrable, and the area bombing soon ceased. Brest was not spared during this time, and heavy raids were frequent. Between them, the Americans and the British dropped 9,133 tons of bombs on the Biscay ports from January to May 1943.68 During this period, 144 civilians in Brest were killed. In February 1943, the v 15 v

Introduction evacuation of 12,000 people – the elderly, the infirm, children, women who did not work – was ordered. The Town Hall’s list of civilian victims indicates 492 bombing fatalities and 555 injuries until 6 August 1944.69 The siege of Brest took place from 7 August until 18 September 1944 and was the final period of aerial onslaught. On 4 August, the vast majority of the civilian population was evacuated before the US Army arrived. The small garrison of Germans stationed in Brest was rapidly reinforced by 35,000 parachutists from General Ramcke’s 2nd Division, ordered to hold the town, come what may.70 The fighting was fierce; Eusen negotiated a day’s truce on 14 August, allowing the evacuation of 15,000 more civilians. Nonetheless, around 3,000 remained, living in two deep shelters constructed in 1942.71 The major assault began on 12 August. British and American bombers dropped payload after payload on Brest, while HMS Warspite bombarded the town centre from the water. Eighty-three civilians were killed by bombs during the siege, although a further 373 died in the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter on 9 September.72 The liberated town to which refugees returned had changed beyond recognition. In Brest, the eleven interviewees were drawn from different districts of the town, and came from naval, commercial and industrial backgrounds. The military port was a big employer, and Henri Le Turquais, Yves Le Roy, Cécile Bramé and Yvette Chapalain all had fathers who worked there. Henri and Yves – good friends since childhood, both now widowers and interviewed together – spoke with boyish glee of air raids observed at a distance – the tracer lights, the flak. A different picture emerged in Cécile’s stories of fear and separation from her family. Indeed, all the children in Brest were evacuated away from their families. For Cécile, as for Yvette, whose memories of evacuation were bitter and still raw, family separation was the hardest part of war to endure. A little way from the naval port, Jean Pochart’s family had a farm along the banks of the Penfeld, while Serge Aubrée’s father was a painter and decorator. Serge, an artist, showed me a large oil painting that he had done of women and children sheltering from the bombs; the inscription on it read: ‘We were children in 1944. We would see the light at the end of the tunnel at the Liberation.’ The large painting was propped up in the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter in Brest – not open to the public at the time I visited. For Lucienne Rémeur, that bomb shelter was a site of terrible memory, and the sole focus of her interview. On 9 September 1944, munitions that were being illegally stored in a shelter designed for civilians but also housing hundreds of German soldiers caught light. The fire that raged followed a series of huge v 16 v

Introduction explosions, and turned the shelter into a furnace inside which hundreds of French and Germans were trapped. Lucienne managed to alert her mother in time and dragged her up the staircase. The two were propelled out of the entrance by the force of the explosion, and were taken to a German military hospital, injured but alive. These interviewees are some of the few people still alive who remember – always fondly – Brest before the war.

Lille Lille, capital of Flanders, lies on the River Deûle about twenty kilometres from the Belgian border, linked by canals and canalised rivers not only to the sea, but to the coalfields of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Lille’s position made it an important communications hub, and it grew into a wealthy commercial centre. Goods could travel from across France to reach the North Sea at Dunkirk, bypassing Paris, via the nationally important local railway network, and the proximity of coal created an industrial boom in the nineteenth century.73 As well as being the regional capital, Lille was the prefecture of the Nord, a département that in 1939 produced 60 per cent of France’s coal, half its electricity and almost all of its worsted, woven linen and cotton. Coal led to steel production, and with steel came engineering and construction of all kinds. The Nord also provided half of the nation’s food processing, chemicals, clothing, leather and cardboard. This all made the area rather attractive to an enemy occupier – and to that occupier’s airborne enemies.74 Fewer bombs fell on Lille itself, but its industrial suburbs – Fives and Hellemmes in the east and Lomme in the west – tell a different story. Part of the conurbation of Lille since 1858, Fives was home to the vast railway station Fives-Lille. Contemporaneous with the nearby marshalling yard at Saint-Sauveur, this was the oldest complex of heavy goods stations in Lille, dating from the 1860s. A  large rail and locomotive workshop abutted Fives-Lille, along the southern edge of the commune of Hellemmes. Just north was the biggest local employer, the Usine de Fives. Nearby were other factories, notably Peugeot in Fives, and textile manufacturers in Hellemmes. West of Lille, there was a freight station at the river port, and in 1921, another giant freight station and marshalling yard, Lille-Délivrance, was constructed next to the commune of Lomme, itself home to many factories including steel and electrical works.75 The impressive new station was two and a half kilometres long, comprising sidings, platforms and repair workshops for locomotives and v 17 v

Introduction rolling stock.76 Lille’s population, stable since the end of the Great War, was 200,000 in 1936; that of Hellemmes was 18,500 (an increase of 30 per cent since 1921) and that of Lomme 21,500 (a rise of nearly 50 per cent since 1921). Workers in Fives and Hellemmes lived in rows of red-brick terraced houses, with back-to-back gardens. They suffered the ills of any industrial population – tuberculosis, rickets, alcoholism and so on.77 The new railway workers’ housing estate next to Lille-Délivrance aimed to rectify this. Designed on the British garden city model, the curvy-laned cité des cheminots (railway workers’ housing estate) comprised 835 modern semi-detached houses, each with a vegetable patch.78 The German presence in Lille was large because the town was a relaxation centre for soldiers.79 Because of its strategic and economic importance, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais was designated the zone rattachée and run from Brussels, unlike the rest of occupied France, which was governed from Paris. It was one of five Oberfeldkommandantur (OFK, High Field Command) under the control of General von Falkanhausen, Belgium’s military commander, and directed by the half-French Carlo Schmid, who oversaw three Feldkommandantur (Field Commands) in Arras, Lille and Valenciennes.80 Economic, political and administrative policy differed between the two countries, and OFK 670 at Lille had some autonomy compared to its Belgian counterparts; this autonomy affected that of the French administration.81 Cobb describes the relation between the Germans and French here as ‘a pas de deux that would exclude a third party’: the third party was Vichy.82 Fernand Carles had been Prefect of the Nord since 1936, and continued in his post until 1944. Because the OFK 670 largely ignored Vichy until 1942, Carles remained free of Vichy interference; at the same time, by treading ‘a discrete path of collaboration’ with the Germans, he fended off too much intervention from that direction too.83 The mayor of Lille was the socialist Paul Dehove, who represented the old Republican left of the Third Republic. He was appointed to maintain some left-wing continuity in Lille’s municipal council, but mostly, it seems, as he was unlikely to rock Carles’ boat.84 The first bombs fell on Fives on 27 June 1941, killing fifteen people and injuring more than forty; the suburb drew the bombers on two more occasions that summer. During March 1942, the War Cabinet decided to renew its ‘circus’ bombing of northern France, a campaign intended to entice German fighter planes away from the Eastern Front. Many targets were around Lille, and bombed in July:  Lomme, Sequedin, Fives-Lille, the Mont-de-Terre, the chemical-textile Kuhlmann factories.85 That autumn and into early 1943, the rail workshops at Fives-Lille were a v 18 v

Introduction target on four occasions, killing 143 people, injuring forty, many in Fives and Hellemmes, and leaving 2,000 workers unemployed.86 The skies were quieter in spring 1943, but Lille-Délivrance was attacked three times in the summer, with tracks, sidings and platforms damaged, and munitions exploded. Up to the beginning of 1944, the industrial targets and rail installations around the city had been bombed on about fifteen occasions, killing 160 people from Lille, and double that in the suburbs.87 In early 1944 Churchill reluctantly agreed to the Transportation Plan: the systematic destruction of the rail network in northern France to impede German movements after the Allied landings. By March, the plan was underway, despite Churchill’s and Eden’s misgivings about civilian casualties. On 10 April 1944, 219 RAF heavy bombers attacked Lille-Délivrance, dropping 3,335 bombs, of which only 26 per cent hit the target area. At some points, bombs were falling at a rate of 300 per minute. There were 502 fatalities in Lomme and a similar number injured. In the railway workers’ garden city, destruction was immense:  80 per cent of dwellings were destroyed or seriously damaged, as well as the medical centre, the bathhouse, a primary school and the library. A month later, another huge raid took place. Nearly 2,500 bombs fell on Fives and Hellemmes, killing 250 people, destroying 1,300 houses and leaving 1,165 other buildings, including nine factories, seriously damaged. Attacks on the rail network continued after D-Day: that of 22 June 1944 resulted in the destruction of about sixty-five streets in south-east Lille, the Saint-Sacrement church, Denis Diderot technical college, 1,200 houses and twenty-two factories. About 170 people were killed. Churchill had set a ceiling of 10,000 French fatalities for the Transportation Plan; the Nord-Pas-de-Calais provided a fifth of them during April and May 1944.88 The twelve people I  interviewed in the Lille area came mostly from working-class backgrounds, reflecting the populations of the districts most sorely tried by the Allies’ bombs. Striking and moving accounts of the air raid of 10 April 1944 were given by Michel Jean-Bart and Pierre Haigneré. Both men had spent their childhoods on the railway workers’ housing estate of La Délivrance, sandwiched between the giant freight station and the district of Lomme. Without cellars, their houses offered little protection, but both boys’ dwellings were spared complete destruction. Across town in Hellemmes, Josette and André Dutilleul’s fathers also worked on the railways. Here the back-to-back houses at least had cellars, but both families eventually spurned them for the seemingly safer tunnels of a nearby quarry. Just to the north, also in Hellemmes, were the v 19 v

Introduction families of Thérèse Leclercq, Sonia Agache, and Paul and Marie-Thérèse Termote. Sonia and Thérèse both gave clear and detailed descriptions of the aftermath of a raid on their school; born in 1938, Thérèse’s words are particularly interesting as she was so young at the time. Her testimony is a useful contrast to that of older interviewees. When I interviewed them, Édith and Jean Denhez were living in Lomme, but both had grown up elsewhere in the département of the Nord, Édith in Cambrai and Jean in Aulnoye. Jean sadly passed away while my research was still in progress. He had invited me to interview his wife about the death of her older brother Jacques under the bombs, which they had never really discussed together, although he was aware of the extent to which that event had scarred his wife’s family. During the interview he asked as many questions as I did, and added his memories too. Édith’s calm and good-natured analysis of her family story provides a subtle meditation on family, bereavement and memory.

The structure of this book And so the scene is set in three French towns with different histories, different characters, different administrative systems and different bombing experiences. Yet every air raid experienced by an individual follows the same pattern: there is a time before bombing, a time during bombing, a time after bombing, and a time many years later  – in this case, about seventy years later. This temporal movement provides the structure of this book, permitting comparative analysis across events with different chronologies. For some, the first Allied air raid was in July 1940, for others, April 1944. Four years of war separated those experiences. Chapter  1 discusses some of the aspects of memory, children and trauma that underpin the following chapters, and introduces the use of oral history as a key methodology for this study. The analytical core is then divided into three parts. Part I, ‘Expecting bombing’, deals with the time before bombing. In Chapter 2, I examine the how the French prepared for war, moving from macro to micro, analysing preparations for war generally and then children’s expectations of war during the interwar period. Chapter  3 treats preparations made specifically for bombing, showing how state-level and municipal-level preparations, including provision of gas masks, and blackout shelters, filtered down to the family level, where children interpreted them as harbingers of action. Part II, ‘Experiencing bombing’, considers the time during bombing and its aftermath. Chapter 4 considers the experience of being bombed, v 20 v

Introduction examining children’s practical, sensory and emotional responses. This chapter answers a fundamental question at the root of any attempt to describe the past:  what was it like? In Chapter  5, I  show how children adapted to repeated bombing, revealing many of them as active participants and decision-makers within society. As Allied bombing policy developed, so did the way that the French State and municipalities met the challenge; families and individuals also adapted behaviour, with evolving routines that responded to understandings of the threat that were now based in experience. Chapter  6 examines the fascinating and frightening scenes in the immediate aftermath of bombing that made lasting impressions on children, including destruction, chaos and encounters with violent, public death. It concludes, moving from the domestic to the national, with a consideration of aid provision in the aftermath. Lastly, in Chapter 7, we see the consequences of bombing played out in children’s lives: local disruptions, being bombed out, becoming a refugee or being evacuated. Part III, ‘Explaining bombing’, looks at the way in which air raids were explained to the French population as they happened, and then how those who lived through them manage, years later, to explain what happened to them. In Chapter 8, I analyse the portrayal of bombing to the French by those wishing to influence opinion, first looking at propaganda that criticised the Allies, and then at that which defended or accepted their air raids. Propaganda designed specifically for children is presented in Chapter  9 to illustrate how storytelling was used for political purposes. It uses the themes of betrayal, friends and enemies, participation and victimhood, within the propaganda and the interviews. Chapter 10 looks at the interviewees’ present-day explanations of the Allied bombing and the way in which they situate it within a wider war, comprised not only of their own experiences but also those of others. The conclusion, ‘Evaluating bombing’ takes a long view, looking explicitly at the impact of bombing on individual lives, at its impact beyond individual lives – on France, on our understanding of the history of Vichy – and finally at bombing in memory. Since 2007 when Jean-François Murraciole described the Allied bombing as a ‘black hole’ in French collective memory, there has been an increase in scholarly and national interest in bombing and civilian life in France during the period 1940–44 more broadly. The President of the Republic, François Hollande, paid homage to the civilian victims of war at his commemorative speech on 6 June 2014 in Caen. Likewise, an academic conference in Le Havre in September 2014 attracted not only v 21 v

Introduction a range of international scholars but an interested and engaged public. For Caen and Le Havre, both flattened by the Allies in 1944, the spotlight shines straight onto the bombs and their legacy. But for many other parts of France, understanding the Allied bombing has barely begun.

Notes 1 All oral history interviews used in this book were conducted by the author in 2009, and are archived in municipal archives in France. Details of each interview and biographical sketches of each interviewee are in the Appendix at the end of this volume. All interviews were conducted in French and all translations from the interview material are the author’s own. Likewise, all translations to English from primary and secondary sources are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated. 2 Estimating the numbers of dead is far from simple. See C.  Baldoli and A.  Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes:  France and Italy under Allied Air Attack, 1940–1945 (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 260–2. 3 J.-F. Muracciole, ‘Le bombardement stratégique en France durant la seconde guerre mondiale:  premier bilan et pistes de recherche’, in M.  Battesti and P.  Facon (eds.), Les Bombardements alliés sur la France durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale: stratégies, bilans matériels et humains (Vincennes: Cahiers du CEHD no. 37, 2007), p. 174. 4 See N. Wood, Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (Oxford and New  York:  Berg, 1999)  for analysis of the reach of Pierre Nora’s multi-volume Les Lieux de Mémoire, 3 vols (Paris:  Gallimard, 1984–92). For those towns almost wholly obliterated by the Allies, such as Le Havre, bombing can be seen as a lieu de mémoire, although it is perhaps more accurate to see reconstruction rather than the air raid as the site of local commemorative activity (A. Knapp, ‘The destruction and liberation of Le Havre in modern memory’, in Battesti and Facon (eds.), Les Bombardements alliés sur la France, pp. 191–213). 5 D. Lee, Pétain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 6 S. L. Fogg, The Politics of Daily Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables and Strangers (Cambridge and New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 2008); N.  Dombrowski Risser, France Under Fire:  German Invasion, Civilian Flight and Family Survival during the Second World War (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012); J.  Torrie ‘For Their Own Good’:  Civilian Evacuations in Germany and France, 1939–1945 (New  York and Oxford:  Berghahn, 2010); D.  Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France, 1939–1947 (Paris: Éditions Payot, 1995); H. Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Introduction 7 R. Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (New York: Picador, 2002), p. 16. 8 A. Knapp, Les Français sous les bombes alliées (Paris:  Tallandier, 2014). Knapp’s bibliography is to date the most comprehensive on this subject, and demonstrates the wealth of local studies on bombing, particularly in the most sorely tried regions such as Normandy and Brittany. 9 Data from www.insee.fr show that in 1940 there were roughly 10.6 million people aged under 16 in France, out of a total population of 40.6 million people (under 16s thus accounting for 26.1 per cent of the population). They were around 26.4 per cent of the population in 1941, 26.1 per cent in 1942 and 1943, and 25.9 per cent in 1944. 10 P. S. Fass (ed.), The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). 11 S. Eth and R. S. Pynoos, ‘Developmental perspective on psychic trauma in childhood’, in C. R. Figley (ed.), Trauma and its Wake, Vol. I, The Study and Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (New  York:  Brunner/Mazel, 1985), pp. 33–52. 12 See, for example, R. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1950); M. Parsons and P. Starns, Evacuation: The True Story (Peterborough: DSM, 1999); J. Welshman, Churchill’s Children: The Evacuation Experience in Wartime Britain (Oxford:  Oxford University Press: 2010); I. Tames, ‘Children of Dutch Nazi collaborators’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 22.2 (2015), pp. 221–41. 13 T. Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 14 See, for example, D. Marshall, ‘The construction of children as an object of international relations: the Declaration of Children’s Rights and the Child Welfare Committee of League of Nations, 1900–1924’, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 7.2 (1999), pp. 103–48; E. Baughan, ‘ “Every Citizen of Empire Implored to Save the Children!” Empire, internationalism and the Save the Children Fund in inter-war Britain’, Historical Research, 86.231 (2012), pp. 116–37; J. Droux, ‘Children and youth: a central cause in the circulatory mechanisms of the League of Nations (1919–1939)’, Prospects, 45.1 (2015), pp. 63–76. 15 See, for example, H. Schmitz and A. Seidel-Arpacɩ, Narratives of Trauma: Discourses of German Wartime Suffering in National and International Perspective (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011). 16 On women’s lives under the Occupation, see, for example, F. Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel feminin (Paris:  Seuil, 1995); M.  Pollard (ed.), Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); H. Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France 1939–1948: Choices and Constraints (London: Longman, 1999); as well as the section on gender in H. R. Kedward and N. Wood (eds.), The Liberation

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Introduction of France: Image and Event (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 77–180, particularly chapters by K. Adler and H. Footitt. 17 W. D. Halls, The Youth of Vichy France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); J.-W. Dereymez (ed.), Être jeune en France, 1939–1945 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); P. Giolitto, Histoire de la jeunesse sous Vichy (Paris: Perrin, 1991); Lee, Pétain’s Jewish Children. 18 For example, N. Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France (London: Taylor and Francis, 1991); R. Handourtzel, Vichy et l’école, 1940–44 (Paris: Éditions Noesis, 1997); J. K. Proud, Children and Propaganda (Bristol and Portland, OR:  Intellect, 1995); P.  Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, Vol. II, 1830–Present (New York and Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2008). The volume J.-F. Condette (ed.), Les Écoles dans la guerre: acteurs et institutions éducatives dans les tourmentes guerrières (XVIIe-XXe siècles) (Villeneuve d’Ascq:  Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2014)  contains nine chapters on education around the Vichy period, although the approach is rather structural and children themselves rarely appear. 19 L. L. Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880–1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); L.  L. Downs, ‘Milieu social or milieu familial? Theories and practices of childrearing among the popular classes in twentieth-century France and Britain: the case of evacuation (1939–45)’, Family and Community History, 8.1 (2005), pp. 49–65. 20 Torrie, ‘For Their Own Good’, pp. 63–7. 21 S. Fishman, The Battle for Children: World War II, Youth Crime and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 22 S. Mintz, ‘Why the history of childhood matters’, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 5.1 (2012), p. 22; M. Venken and M. Röger, ‘Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War: European perspectives’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 22.2 (2015), pp. 203–4. 23 P. Le Melledo, Lorient à l’heure de l’évacuation:  Itinéraire d’un Gavroche lorientais (La Faouët: Liv’éditions, 2004); N. Roux, C’est la guerre les enfants (Cherbourg-Octeville:  Isoète, 2007); M.  Carrier (ed.), Maréchal nous voilà… 1940–1944. Souvenirs d’enfances sous l’Occupation (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2004). 24 J.-P. Guéno (ed.), Paroles d’Étoiles: Mémoires d’enfants cachés, 1939–1945 (Paris: Librio, 2002); M. Capul, ‘Une maison d’enfants pendant la guerre, 1939–1945: Moissac’, EMPAN, 57 (2005), pp. 20–7. In this article, now ten years old, Capul cites seven films and at least ten scholarly works treating the subject; still more existed then and have been published since. 25 A. Wylegała, ‘Child migrants and deportees from Poland and Ukraine after the Second World War: experience and memory’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 22.2 (2015), p. 292.

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Introduction 26 The closest is perhaps G. Ragache’s Les Enfants de la guerre: vivre, survivre, lire et jouer en France 1939–1949 (Paris:  Perrin, 1997), but this focuses more on aspects of childhood than children themselves. 27 There is a vast body of work on pro-natalism in France from the nineteenth century onwards, particularly in relation to gender and family policy. Research on Vichy’s family policy includes M. Bordeaux, La Victoire de la famille dans la France défaite (Paris: Flammarion, 2002) and C. Capuano, Vichy et la famille:  réalités et faux-semblants d’une politique publique (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009); A. H. Reggiani’s (older) article ‘Procreating France: the politics of demography, 1919–1945’, French Historical Studies, 19.3 (1996), pp. 725–54 provides an excellent gateway into this literature. 28 J. Schweitzer and K. Thompson, ‘Children and young people in wartime’, Oral History Journal, 15.2 (1987), p. 34. 29 See, for example, L.  Apel, ‘Voices from the rubble society  – “Operation Gomorrah” and its aftermath’, Journal of Social History, 44.4 (2011), pp. 1019–32. 30 A. A. M. Thabet, K. Karim and P. Vostanis, ‘Trauma exposure in pre-school children in a war zone’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 188 (2006), pp. 154–8. 31 M. H. Mercier and J. L. Despert, ‘Psychological effects of the war on French children’, Psychosomatic Medicine, 5.3 (1943), p. 266. Children’s nutritional deficiencies were the real focus of paediatric attention during this period (see, for example, the studies cited in H. C. Stuart, ‘Review of evidence as to the nutritional state of children in France’, American Journal of Public Health, 35.4 (1945), pp. 299–307). Furthermore, there was very little psychoanalytical activity going on in France during that period, given that most practitioners shut up shop – at least publicly – during the war (A. de Mijolla, ‘Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France between 1939 and 1945’, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 12 (2003), pp. 136–7). Also, the Allied bombing was a delicate issue for medical publishing, as finding few detrimental effects of bombing among civilians might be seen as condoning Allied attacks on France, whereas negative effects would please Vichy and/or the Germans, which practitioners may have wished to avoid. Only after the liberation did psychologists, psychoanalysts and paediatricians begin to publish about war trauma (see, for example, R Charpentier, reviews of J.  Alliez and J.  Charpin, Guerre et troubles mentaux. Peut-on parler de psychose du bombardement (Comité médicale des Bouches-duRhône, séance du 1er décembre 1944, Marseille-médical, 15 mars 1944), and of C. L. François, Enfants victimes de la guerre. Une expérience pédagogique “Le Renouveau” (Paris: Bourellier, 1949) in Annales médico-psychologiques, 1946 (vol. 1), 194, and 1949 (vol. 2), pp. 600–1). On medical activity in France during this period more broadly see, for example, Anon., review of J. Hamburger (ed.), Medical Research in France during the War 1939–1945

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Introduction (Paris:  Flammarion, 1947)  in the American Journal of Psychiatry, 197 (1950); D. T. Zallen, ‘Louis Rapkine and the restoration of French science after World War II’, French Historical Studies, 17.1 (1991), pp. 6–37; W. H. Schneider, ‘War, philanthropy and the National Institute of Hygiene in France, Minerva, 41 (2003), pp. 1–23. 32 F. Bodman, ‘War conditions and the mental health of the child’, British Medical Journal, 4 October 1941, p. 486. 33 E. Glover, ‘Notes on the psychological effects of war conditions on the civilian population. Part III: the “Blitz” – 1940–41’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 23 (1942), pp. 32–4. 34 D. Burlingham and A. Freud, Young Children in Wartime (London: Allen and Unwin, 1942) and Infants without Families (London: Allen and Unwin, 1944); Glover, ‘Notes on the psychological effects’, p. 34. For a recent analysis of British psychoanalysis, childhood and family in the Second World War, and its impact on post-war social reconstruction, see M. Shapira, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 35 C. J. Carey-Trefzer, ‘The results of a clinical study of war-damaged children who attended the Child Guidance Clinic, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London’, Journal of Mental Science, 400 (1949), pp. 539, 541. 36 M. Koreman, The Expectation of Justice:  France, 1944–1946 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); see also, for example, Dombrowski Risser’s geographical focus on the départements of the Marne and the Corrèze, Gildea’s examination of the Loire Valley in Marianne in Chains, or Hilary Footitt’s mix of five regions, départements and municipalities in War and Liberation in France: Living with the Liberators (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 37 F. Picard, L’Épopée de Renault (Paris: Albin Michel, 1974), p. 75. 38 N. Ambourg, F. Bédoussac, S. Couëtoux and B. Foucart, BoulogneBillancourt: Ville d’art et d’histoire (Paris: Éditions de la Patrimoine, 2009), pp. 22–5. 39 P. Guillot, ‘Un maire de banlieue face à la question du logement entre discours et pratique: le cas d’André Morizet (1919–1942)’, Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique, 98 (2006), p. 16; A. Bezançon (with A. Gaye and G. Caillet), Histoire de Boulogne-Billancourt (Boulogne-Billancourt: Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt and Éditions Joël Cuénot, 1984), pp. 62–3, 72. 40 Bezançon, Histoire de Boulogne-Billancourt, p. 47. 41 Morizet’s friend Henri Sellier, mayor of Suresnes, is probably better known. R.  Payre, ‘Henri Sellier et la réforme municipale en avril 1942’, Genèses, 41 (2000), pp. 143–63; K. Burlen (ed.), La Banlieue oasis: Henri Sellier et les cités-jardins (1900–1940) (Vincennes: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1987); J. Howarth, ‘From the bourgeois republic to the social

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Introduction republic’, in S. Williams (ed.), Socialism in France: From Jaurès to Mitterand (London: Frances Pinter, 1983), pp. 7–9. 42 Population figures, unless otherwise stated, come from the census data listed on ‘Des villages Cassini aux communes d’aujourd’hui’, http://cassini. ehess.fr/cassini/fr. 43 M.-O. Baruch, Servir l’État Français: l’administration on France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris:  Fayard, 1997), p.  229; N.  Wouters, ‘Municipal government during the Occupation (1940–45):  a comparative model of Belgium, the Netherlands and France’, European History Quarterly, 36.2 (2006), pp. 232–3; ‘Chronologies’, in A. Fourcaut, E. Bellanger, M. Flonneau (eds.), Paris/banlieues: conflits et solidarités (Paris: Créaphis, 2007), pp. 443–5. 44 Wouters, ‘Municipal government’, p. 240. 45 Bezançon, Histoire de Boulogne-Billancourt, p. 84. 46 TNA (The National Archives of the UK), AIR 19/217: memo for discussion at War Cabinet meeting (3rd meeting, 1942), 8 January 1942. 47 TNA, AIR 19/217: Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (Bottomley) to Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (Harris), 5 February 1942. 48 J. Costa-Lascoux and E.  Temime, Les Hommes de Renault-Billancourt. Mémoire ouvrière de l’île Seguin 1930–1992 (Paris: Autrement, 2004), p. 51. 49 G. Hatry, ‘Billancourt sous les bombes’, Bulletin de la Section d’Histoire des Usines Renault, 30.5 (1985), p. 247; A. Rhodes, Louis Renault: A Biography (London:  Cassell, 1969), pp.  173, 183; Renault’s later defenders see him as having complied with German demands in order to keep control of his factories, and to prevent his plant, staff and designs being removed to Germany or being absorbed entirely by Daimler-Benz (Rhodes, Louis Renault, p. 174). 50 TNA, AIR19/217: Baker to Sinclair, 5 March 1942. 51 AMBB (Archives Municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt), 6H72: Mairie de Boulogne-Billancourt, ‘Réponse aux renseignements demandés par Melle Levenez (Préfecture de la Seine – poste 247) sur les bombardements subis par la Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 26 January 1945. This report is used hereafter as the source for figures of civilian deaths and injuries during air raids on Boulogne-Billancourt. 52 Hatry, ‘Billancourt sous les bombes’, p. 249. 53 Again, inconsistencies abound. The figure cited here is from AMBB, 6H72: ‘Réponse aux renseignements…’, 26 January 1945. 54 Hatry, ‘Billancourt sous les bombes’, p. 251; AMBB, 6H72: ‘Réponse aux renseignements…’, 26 January 1945. 55 E.-G. Eun, ‘Une gestion socialiste en matière de logement: BoulogneBillancourt (1947–1967), Le Mouvement Social, 213.4 (2005), p. 43. 56 P. Galliou, Histoire de Brest (Paris:  Éditions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 2007), pp. 36, 99.

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Introduction 57 These three communes were incorporated into Brest during the post-war reconstruction. The present-day conurbation, known as Brest métropole océane, also comprises the communes of Bohars, Gouesnou, Guilers, Guipavas, Plougastel-Daoulas, Plouzané and Le Relecq-Kerhuon. 58 AMCB (Archives Municipales et Communautaires de Brest), 4H4.25: ‘Incidences des principaux bombardements subis par la Ville de Brest au cours de la guerre’, 10 April 1946. 59 H. Le Boterf, La Bretagne dans la guerre (1938–1945) (Paris: France-Empire, 2000), p. 251. 60 F. Péron, Brest sous l’occupation (Rennes: Ouest-France, 1981), p. 84. 61 J. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 246–7. 62 AMCB, 4H4.25: ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (18 June 1940–5 January 1941), 8 January 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (9 January–5 February 1941), 5 February 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (5 February–5 March 1941), 5 March 1941. Although his periodisation does not quite match mine, Le Boterf notes that between June 1940 and June 1941, Brest experienced 242 alerts (Le Boterf, La Bretagne, p. 192). 63 Churchill issued the Battle of the Atlantic Directive on 9 March 1941. All directives are reprinted in C. Webster and N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (London: HMSO, 1961), Vol. IV, pp. 118–72; L.  Dodd and A.  Knapp, ‘ “How many Frenchmen did you kill?” Allied bombing policy towards France (1940–1945)’, French History, 22.4 (2008), pp.  476, Table  1, details major directives issued to Bomber Command, which had France as a target. 64 D. Richards, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, Vol. I, The Fight at Odds (London: HMSO, 1973), pp. 221–5, 233–6, 359–75. 65 E. Florentin, Quand les Alliés bombardaient la France, 1940–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), pp. 44–5. 66 AMCB, 4H4.25: ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (5 March–5 Apr. 1941), 5 April 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (5–30 April 1941), 3 May 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (1–31 May 1941), 3 June 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (1–30 June 1941), 1 July 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (1–31 July 1941), 31 July 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (September 1941), 3 October 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (November 1941), 6 December 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (December 1941), 2 January 1942; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (January 1942), 2 February 1942. 67 This decision is discussed at length in Dodd and Knapp, ‘ “How many Frenchmen did you kill?” ’, pp. 487–91. 68 S. Roskill, The War at Sea, Vol. II (London: HMSO, 1956), p. 353. 69 See notes 62 and 66 above, plus AMCB, 4H4.25: ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (18 June 1940–5 January 1941), 8 January 1941; ‘Victimes des

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Introduction bombardements’ (9 January–5 February 1941), 5 February 1941; ‘Victimes des bombardements’ (5 February–5 March 1941), 5 March 1941; lists of bombing victims for St-Pierre-Quilbignon, Brest, Lambézellec and St-Marc, for raids up to 16 April 1943 (untitled and undated). 70 P. Galliou, Histoire de Brest (Paris:  Éditions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 2007), p. 103; Péron, Brest, pp. 101–4; Le Boterf, La Bretagne, p. 530. 71 Le Boterf, La Bretagne, p. 531. 72 More than 10,000 German deaths occurred during the siege of Brest, with some 38,000 prisoners taken, while the Americans lost 9,831 soldiers (Péron, Brest, p. 121). 73 A. Labaste, ‘Les relations par voie ferrée entre l’est et le nord de la France’, Annales de Géographie, 41.231 (1932), p. 257. 74 E. Dejonghe and Y.  Le Maner, Le Nord-Pas-de-Calais dans la main allemande, 1940–1944 (Lille: La Voix du Nord, 1999), pp. 144–5. 75 C. Tiry, ‘From Lille-Flandres to Lille-Europe  – the evolution of a railway station’, Japan Railway and Transport Review, 20 (1995), pp.  45–6; G. Backeroot, ‘Les centrales électriques dans le nord de la France’, Annales de Géographie, 32.175 (1923), pp. 65–7. 76 L. Lacey-Johnson, Point Blank and Beyond (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing Ltd, 1991), p. 69. 77 Dejonghe and Le Maner, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, p. 8. 78 R. Cobb, French and Germans, Germans and French:  A  Personal Interpretation of France under Two Occupations:  1914–1918/1940–1945 (Watertown, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1981), p. 44. 79 Dejonghe and Le Maner, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, pp. 137–41. 80 N. Wouters, ‘Davantage la France que la Belgique:  l’unicité du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 1940–1944’, Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps présent/ Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis, 15 (2005), pp. 207–8; A. Caudron (with O. Boucq), La Libération. Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Belgique (Strasbourg and Roubaix: Éditions La Nuée Bleu and Nord Éclair, 1994), pp. 16–18; Cobb, French and Germans, p. 42. 81 Wouters, ‘Municipal government’, p.  226; Y.  Le Maner, ‘Le Nord et le Pas-de-Calais’, in G. Le Béguec and D. Peschanski (eds.), Les Elites locales dans la tourmente: du front populaire aux années cinquante (Paris: CNRS, 2000), p. 353. 82 Cobb, French and Germans, p. 44. 83 Dejonghe and Le Maner, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, p.  8; R.  Gildea, ‘Resistance, reprisals and community in occupied France’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 13 (2003), p. 169; Wouters, ‘Municipal government’, p. 226. 84 Wouters, ‘Davantage la France’, p. 220; Le Maner, ‘Le Nord-Pas-de-Calais’, p. 354. 85 TNA, AIR 19/217:  Portal to Churchill, 5 March 1942; Bottomley to Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, 13 March 1942.

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Introduction 86 L. Detrez and A.  Chatelle, Tragédies en Flandres (Lille  – Roubaix  – Tourcoing), 1939–1944 (Lille: Tallandier, 1952), p. 240. 87 Detrez and Chatelle, Tragédies en Flandres, pp. 238–244; AML (Archives Municipales de Lille), 5H10.2bis:  ‘Victimes civiles, guerre 1939–45 (Classement par événements)’, Ville de Lille (undated); AML, 5H3.19: Ville de Lille, ‘Plan des secteurs menacés’, 27 September 1943. 88 Lacey-Johnson, Point Blank and Beyond, pp.72–3; Dejonghe and Le Maner, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, p.  342; Detrez and Chatelle, Tragédies en Flandres, pp. 250–2.

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v 1 v

Telling stories

Henri Girardon: I know very well that today there are people of my age who will tell you the worst kind of stories about the war, and you must be wary of them. You’re a historian. You know very well that you have to pay attention to what’s said. Me, well, I’m always suspicious, because people want to play the victim all the time.

This book tells a story of the past, through stories of the past. But as Henri Girardon warned me when I interviewed him in Brest in 2009, stories are versions of the past filtered through the storyteller’s perspective. Stories are integral to human communication and our primary means of transmitting experience. The oral narratives that comprise this book’s sources are stories; that is, they are narrated versions of parts of autobiographical memory. They are interpretations of the past. In his essay on ‘The painter of modern life’, the nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, whose work ushered in modern(ist) ideas about subjectivity, wrote that when a work of art is viewed, what reaches that spectator is not the painter’s replication of a scene from reality, but a translation of that scene’s ‘impression’ on the mind of the painter.1 We are several steps removed from reality. Representing that reality needs a human filter. So too for history; yet while positivistic modes of representing the world – realism, naturalism – have lost their totalising grip in the artistic world, a certain ‘scientific’ kind of history still chases that goal. Another mode of history writing is more impressionistic. Channelled through the storyteller or the historian, the past is recognisable, striking, but not an exact replica of ‘what actually happened’ – for that is impossible. Of storytelling, one of Baudelaire’s translators, the philosopher Walter Benjamin, noted: [It] does not aim to convey the pure essence of the thing, like information or a report. It sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring

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Telling stories it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel.2

Such ‘handprints’ exist in the words of the interviewees, as well as in the historical narrative and analysis running around them. I will sketch out a number of methodological perspectives on memory, oral history, children in history and trauma, in order that those ‘handprints’ are better identified in what follows.

History or memory? Memory and history can be uncomfortable bedfellows. As Henri Girardon’s comments suggest, a cloud of suspicion hangs over memories of wartime France in particular. While Pierre Nora’s Les Lieux de mémoire is accepted as a seminal work in memory studies, Nancy Wood has pointed out that in France it created a dominant idea of performative, national memory that is ‘qualitatively different to a memory that is merely lived and experienced’.3 In contrast to other nations, the land of liberty, equality and fraternity has, until quite recently, dismissed oral history as ‘partial and partisan’.4 In Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe, the Anglophone nations, Spain, across South America and in many parts of Africa and Asia, oral history has become a valued historical research tool. As a methodology and a movement it has struggled for acceptance inside scholarly academic history in France  – although ‘sound archives’ (archives sonores) proliferate inside institutions dedicated to collecting and preserving the patrimoine (national heritage).5 This rejection may in part be due to a strong French tradition of historical positivism, the legacy of structuralism, academic conservatism, competing and influential methodologies, and a recent history fraught with bitter secrets, which has cast Memory as the villain to a heroic Truth. The Aubrac ‘affair’, and particularly the resistance couple’s round-table ‘trial’ by historians in May 1997 exemplified the extent to which the ‘historian’s representation’ of the past was privileged over accounts by historical actors.6 This view of ‘the historian’s task’ has now loosened a little, and remaining French resisters are more able to speak – and even to correct historians – in front of an audience less prone to seeing itself as a jury. It is restrictive to see history as fixed or total, and the practice of oral history certainly leads to a heightened awareness of an uncountable number of versions of the past. Memory and history are inextricably linked. v 32 v

Telling stories Historians have always used memory as a source: it is present in written documents from court records to chronicles, private letters to pamphlets. One of the problems, it seems, with memory is that we can all do it. Memory is an amateur sport while the professionalisation of the past is history. But if we seek to democratise the past – by studying ordinary people in the past, by involving them in its discovery and by writing in a way that is accessible as well as rigorous – then shunning memory can only be a limitation. How should a historian use memory, then? To see it only as providing illustration, colour and accessibility is, as Mary Fulbrook suggests, a pity, particularly given the typical richness of the material and the emotional effort involved in sharing and collecting it. Fulbrook notes that while it can just be used to reconstruct a particular past, it can also be the means by which to analyse ‘the character and significance of memory itself ’, ‘strategies of remembering’ and the ‘social construction of the remembering self ’.7 The memory narratives used in this book give voice to hidden experiences and they immerse the reader in the colour and texture of the past, reconstructing the world of the bombed. But they also form the basis of an analysis of memory. At times the character or significance of memories is therefore considered: why does the gas mask case have such prominence in memory, for example, and not the mask itself? Strategies used to remember traumatic pasts are equally interesting. Why, for example, does Andréa Cousteaux tell such a comical story of an old corpse blown from his tomb by a bomb? I  will also analyse the ‘social construction of the remembering self ’, such as Édith Denhez’s guilt at her brother’s death. Memory is the past in mind, history is the past outside of it, but the borders are not only blurred but porous.

History or oral history? The subtitle ‘an oral history’ was recommended for this book. Why is it necessary to distinguish a history book – which needs no subtitle – from one that uses oral history? Announcing this work as ‘an oral history’ distinguishes it in methodology, but also in focus and content. Oral history alters the epistemological bases of any study:  it changes how we know what we know about the past, as well as what it is possible to know. I did not conceive this research as a study of why France was bombed, nor of where, how or when. Nor was it about who bombed France. It is a book about being bombed. Moreover, it is a book about being bombed as a child. While the variables of why, where, how, who and when are v 33 v

Telling stories vital contextual anchors, the focus here is on event and experience. Using oral history narratives permits a focus on experience that extends beyond the targets, motivations and methods of the Allied bombers. It enables the individuals who survived the air raids to provide their own interpretations, allowing the legacy of these potentially traumatising events to emerge. Given that the Allied bombing has had little presence in public discourse, a source created specifically to address a deficit of subjective information is a way of exploring the place of bombing in memories of wartime childhoods. Oral history therefore gives access to a ‘portion of unimagined existence’;8 unimagined because it is the existence of very ordinary, very unimportant people, whose experiences are nonetheless extraordinary and important. Contemporary administrative material related to bombing is abundant in municipal and departmental archives, including many thousands of letters to mayors seeking protection, help and compensation. Dombrowski Risser made powerful use of similar material in her analysis of the refugees of 1940, but there are limitations to what such evidence can reveal given the context of its creation. Unofficial documents are uncommon, and whole swathes of the population are missing, ‘hidden from history’, not having left written traces. While researching in the municipal archives of Boulogne-Billancourt, I came across a misspelt scrap of a letter from an evacuated child. It read: ‘Dear Mummy and Daddy, come and get me straight away. I’m really unhappy. We haven’t got enough to eat. It’s like being in a prison.’ Evidence, perhaps, of a bad evacuation experience? And yet sifting through the pile of papers, I found a police report investigating this very letter:  it appeared to be fake, sent maliciously to the child’s mother.9 Nonetheless, the local and national administrative context that emerges from the archives provides the shared social framework within which bombing took place, and within which Fulbrook’s ‘communities of experience’ are found. So oral history is a means of getting at subjective past experience. While it did not give access to past childhoods directly from the inside, I could ‘intervene directly’ in the creation of sources to investigate areas beyond the scope of traditional methods.10 Oral history values people’s own interpretations of events in their pasts, and recognises that popular knowledge can be ‘wide and subtle’.11 While it is not necessarily the best method for establishing factual data about the past, it has a democratising base, according ‘a central place’ to the people ‘who made and experienced history’ – meaning the mass of ordinary people.12 It is important to note that these people do indeed make history: individuals emerge as v 34 v

Telling stories many micro-level agents of change. Oral history reveals the motivations and results people ascribe to their own actions in the past, and their own evaluations of what they thought they knew or were doing at the time. Furthermore, it is an excellent tool for ‘reintroduc[ing] emotionality’13 into historical writing – what people felt, believed, hoped, feared. Years ago, Patrick O’Farrell lambasted the method for producing history ‘of the heart’.14 But surely a history ‘of the head’ is just one part of human experience: ‘subjectivity is as much the business of history as are the more visible “facts” ’.15 Certainly, the affective turn in the humanities has brought emotion to the fore as an important category for understanding social, cultural and political change: Jenny Harding notes the shift from ‘thinking about emotions as “things” people “have” ’ to a ‘focus on what emotions “do” ’.16 Emotions are embedded within autobiographical memories, and expressed and experienced during and after the interview. By valuing, analysing and understanding them in relation to the self and society, by seeing fear, hatred or love as drivers of human activity, emotions have become a powerful and indispensable analytical category. And finally, oral history allows for the recreation of ‘the original multiplicity of standpoints’; while recognising commonalities, it foregrounds the heterogeneity of experience.17 Thus experience emerges as unique, subjective and less predictable than schematic generalisations allow. I conducted interviews with thirty-six people during April and May 2009 and was given written accounts by seven others. Details and short biographies are given in the Appendix. These narrators were a self-selected group, which affects the kind of material that arose from the interviews. Those who were more shy or infirm, who felt highly traumatised by bombing, or alternatively that their lives were ‘uneventful’, may not have come forward. Many of those who volunteered already had an amateur interest in the past that made them aware of having ‘participated in’ history. While this was not a ‘representative’ slice of the population, my concern was not for ‘representativity’ – how many men, women, of x age or y social class make a miniature copy of the population at large – but for a range of subjective experiences. The interviewees were sought by writing to local archives, war veterans’ associations, local community centres, elderly people’s social clubs and local genealogical circles. They were born between 1915 and 1939 and distributed across the towns. A few exceptions are worth noting. The eldest, Marguerite Fagard, barely features in this study as I could not consider her to have been a child during wartime, although I have told her story elsewhere.18 Maurice Masse was at the limit of being a youth when he was bombed, while Christian v 35 v

Telling stories de la Bachellerie was on the cusp of adolescence and adulthood. Max Potter, Bernard Leclercq and Jean and Édith Denhez did not live in the case study towns; their stories are included nonetheless as evidence of common experiences. Of the writers, Monique Heuzé and Jean Labaune, like Max Potter, lived in La Chapelle in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. With one exception, interviews were conducted in the interviewees’ homes, and lasted between forty-five and one hundred minutes. Transcripts and CDs were returned to interviewees, with a letter advising them that, if they wished, they could send additional information or factual corrections; the transcript would not be altered, but addenda could be included when the material was, with their consent, archived.19 I went into these interviews having conducted extensive archival research and with a list of certain areas that interested me, broadly following the themes of this book’s chapters: expecting bombing, experiencing bombing, explaining bombing and evaluating bombing. The book is therefore influenced by my initial conceptualisation of the shape of a bombing experience, and by what people told me; this also explains some of the gaps. For example, where is the Catholic Church in this study? It was involved in the aftermath of air raids, but nobody I spoke to mentioned the Church’s role. They spoke of their own prayers and of God, but not of the Church as an organisation. This is partly in the nature of narration, where ‘the thing’ is ‘[sunk] into the life of the storyteller’. We can only access ‘the thing’ from the personal perspective. It is partly, too, in the nature of something akin to grounded theory, where the analysis proceeds from the data and not according to a predetermined set of criteria.20 The Church as an organisation was absent from the narratives, and thus it does not feature as a cornerstone of my analysis; but why, then, do I focus on the Comité Ouvrier de Secours Immédiat (COSI – Workers’ Emergency Relief Committee) or the Secours National (National Relief) when these were not discussed in the oral narratives either? While the Catholic Church was all but absent from the archives I  consulted, the COSI and the Secours National were heavily present. Knapp’s extensive research into the Allied bombing across France revealed a similar absence of reference to the Catholic Church, in comparison to the Italian response to bombing, explored by Claudia Baldoli, where the Church emerges as a key player.21 The Church’s bomb relief activity in France remains to be explored. Oral historian Alessandro Portelli states that ‘interview’ literally means a mutual sighting  – it is a relationship between two or more people. The idea of researcher objectivity is a myth, he writes, stemming v 36 v

Telling stories from a ‘positivistic fetish of non-interference’.22 While it is the case that my research interests and questions structured the interviews, I did not seek to test a priori hypotheses, nor fit responses onto a ‘grid’ that I had already mapped out. Interviews are unlikely ever to be conducted in such sterile conditions as to assure – were that even desirable – the standardisation objectivity would require. The circumstances under which they take place are, like the personal relationships between the individuals involved, highly variable. Intersubjectivity  – the meeting of subjectivities in the interview space – has become increasingly important in oral history research, with researchers trying to understand how differences in class, race and ethnicity, gender and status affect the process of interviewing and shape the interview content.23 A  known instability is at the heart of oral history evidence:  the moment of the interview, its participants, its context all have an (often indeterminable) impact on what arises during the couple of hours that the microphone is on. Another day, another interviewer, another set of data, perhaps. In truth, this instability exists inside all historical evidence. The creation of any document is contingent on a range of circumstantial factors, yet we rarely know them. With oral history we have a chance to try to understand them. The interviews I  conducted were part of a relationship between me, the interviewer  – a younger, female, British academic, usually welcomed in her professional capacity, but sometimes spoken to as a grandchild or treated as a guest invited to tea  – and the interviewees. Evidently this relationship affected the content of the material, not least because French is not my native language. How the interviewees saw me varied. Some linked me directly to the bombers. Maurice Masse, his home destroyed by the RAF in 1942, praised my endeavour to investigate what he considered a shameful part of British history: ‘If only all the English were like you!’24 When speaking of military aviation, Jean Caniot said that in 1941  ‘you didn’t have enough planes’, associating me with the Allies, while Robert Belleuvre was curious to know whether I had a relative who had been in the RAF (I don’t). In other cases, it was my identity as a historian that predominated. Both Christian Solet and Josette Dutilleul, when asked to describe ‘their’ air raids, unfolded lists of statistics they had researched in their local archives: this, surely, was what a historian would want? Undoubtedly the historical ‘document’ is an oral one, but typically oral forms are adapted for print. Sometimes I use very short extracts, often grouped together on similar themes. In these cases, I am more interested in the descriptions they hold, the common points of perspective or the v 37 v

Telling stories divergence of experience. In longer extracts, I am typically more interested in the storytelling, and the character and strategies of memory. Sometimes I  leave in the hesitation. This may appear inconsistent, but it depends on the function of the quotation: if it treats the way the past is remembered and narrated, hesitation matters more than if the focus is circumstantial description. Of course, all of this fiddling with the real document – the audio – breaks so many oral history rules: purists might see these less as handprints and more as a mangling of the very clay itself. Transcription and translation have also altered the document in various ways, but at all times I have tried to remain faithful to the meaning of the interviewees’ words and the spirit of our interactions.

Individual or collective memory? If part of the interest in using oral history is that it reveals the individual, is there not a danger of over-relativisation? For if society consists only of individual subjectivities, historical phenomena may be reduced to things unknowable, where everything is particular and nothing is general. On the other hand, if we draw too much from Maurice Halbwachs’ influential work on collective memory, might we end up seeing the separation of the individual from the group as ‘an abstraction almost devoid of meaning’?25 Our experiences are laid down in a social context, they are remembered within a social context and they are expressed in a social context, but societies are made up of individuals. The idea of collective memory remains powerful, but is perhaps overused. Indeed, Fulbrook goes so far as to call for this ‘carrier bag concept’ to be disposed of in the ‘appropriate historical graveyard’.26 Of course, the past is instrumentalised publicly in a variety of ways, and those ideas seep into individual remembering processes. Such constructed pasts can and do produce seemingly stable and superficially uncontested versions of national history. This process of public memory and history-making is fascinating to study and important to critique. But not only are we walking through a semantic minefield – national memory, public memory, historical memory, shared memory, social memory, cultural memory or collective memory – we are using terms that narrow our vision. Too much focus on what appears to be ‘collective’ means that parts of the past are forgotten. Much work within memory studies deals with the collective act of remembering and not with the individual. What might more accurately be called ‘commemoration studies’ has proliferated around the impact v 38 v

Telling stories of constructions of a shared past on concepts of nation, identity, gender, class, political adherence and so on. Historians in the ‘democratic ages’, Tocqueville noted many years ago, tend not to elevate individuals; all citizens are as powerless as each other and thus in his inability clearly to discern or conspicuously to point out the influence of individuals (the historian) denies they have any. He prefers talking about the characteristics of race, the physical conformation of the country, or the genius of civilization, and thus abridges his own labours and satisfies his reader better.27

The ordinary individual  – too volatile, too unknowable, too small, too individualistic, perhaps – has been largely ignored, left to the psychologists to deal with. In this book, I deal with informal and personal perceptions of an actually experienced past, rather than the formal and national focus of much memory writing. The micro-level can reveal agency; it also values those who are on the receiving end of the decision-makers’ actions. The people I interviewed are historical in their generality rather than their specificity; that is, they are private people and not the leading lights of a political, cultural or social public scene, and are drawn from the mass of invisible actors whose cumulative actions and decisions create social change. They may share external characteristics, living, for example, in the same locality, attending the same school or being little girls or adolescent boys. Yet they are, at the core, individual subjectivities, whose internal characteristics are unique. I previously cited Jean-François Murraciole’s comment that the Allied bombing was a ‘black hole’ in ‘French collective memory of the Second World War’. It is certainly the case that bombing has not featured in the dominant narratives of this historical period  – what I  might prefer to call ‘public memory’: the way that past has been represented back to the public over the intervening period (and the subject of Henri Rousso’s highly influential work on the development of public memory of the Occupation period in France, pathologised as a ‘syndrome’ afflicting the population).28 French public memory has not, until very recently, included the Allied bombing; its attention has been elsewhere, in particular on resistance, occupation, collaboration, the persecution and deportation of Jews. Although bombs, bomb damage and Allied airmen have long appeared in novels and films, they form part of the backdrop to action that privileges other themes. The individual memories recorded v 39 v

Telling stories in interviews are in continual dialogue with public memory; as I show in Part III, people negotiate their own pasts in relation to public understandings of that past. Alistair Thomson’s foundational work on Anzac memories of the First World War indicated the complex interactions between public narratives and private experiences.29 A gap can open between them if individuals’ memories do not correspond with public forms of remembering, and a feeling of alienation can develop. In more practical terms, remembering national events often involves the use of ‘shared cultural scripts’: recognisable, standardised reworkings of the past.30 In this way, the public version of events acts like a jelly mould, shaping personal memories to its contours. Publicly told – and heard – stories tend to conform to accepted versions, and feature components from fixed or semi-fixed cultural scripts. My interviews touched upon subjects for which no cultural scripts are available  – this ‘black hole’ of bombing; not a black hole in collective memory, given that so many memories of it exist within social contexts (family, work, town), but perhaps a blindspot of public memory to date. Consequently, then, the interviews contained very fresh and personalised storytelling; at other times, it slipped into more widely shared narrative forms about food, Germans, Jewish persecution, resistance and so on. So how can this gap between the individual and the group be negotiated? First, the use of autobiographical narratives in general historical accounts not only has a long pedigree, but is well grounded within current historical practice using autobiographical materials such as letters, diaries and memoirs. Without denying their individuality, these people make up the broad swathes of society whose aggregated decisions, motivations and actions ‘influenced history’ and were influenced by it.31 Second, while individual stories have value in themselves, they can also act as case studies. As Grele remarks, we do not interview individuals because ‘they present some abstract statistical norm, but because they typify historical processes’.32 It is not necessary for oral historians to shackle themselves to the idea of large, representative samples; it is possible to learn a great deal from a smaller number of stories. And third, I would also note that even though individuals may not be representative, their stories may be. Portelli understood that one man’s life story contained enough collective and shared elements to see it ‘as a representative document of the local working-class culture’. Such a story may not be ‘average’, but it showed that the narrator had absorbed all of the ‘ingredients of shared possibility’ appropriate to his situation, and retold them as his life story.33 v 40 v

Telling stories It might be more useful to think in terms of what is shared rather than collective. From shared experiences arise separate memories of the events that were shared. Sharing events does not mean they were experienced identically; nor does it mean they are narrated similarly. A person living at thirty-two rue de Silly in Boulogne-Billancourt and her neighbour at number fifty-eight would not experience the air raid of 3 March 1942 on Renault in the same way; but what was happening outside – the planes, the bombs, the bodies, the rubble – would be the same. This is why I prefer Mary Fulbrook’s more fluid term ‘communities of experience’, which I  will couple with Portelli’s notion of ‘shared possibilities’:  indeed, for all those under the bombs across Europe and beyond, the possibilities of death, injury and destruction were shared, while the circumstances differed.

Children or adults? Bombing affected children in a way that no weapon had done before. In comparison to most adults, children live in a certain amount of dependence, subordination and ignorance; their experience of war is therefore inherently different to that of adults. Yet, in line with recent interdisciplinary research, they should be understood as more than ‘helpless victims completely dependent on the actions of adults’:  children are agents in their own lives. As Danforth and Van Boeschoten have demonstrated in their analysis of children in the Greek civil war, they are ‘both vulnerable and capable of acting independently at the same time’.34 Ludmilla Jordanova has warned historians against searching for the ‘autonomous and authentic voice of children’ in the past.35 And indeed, it is very difficult to apprehend the child’s voice in the past, unmediated by the adult world. Children’s diaries and letters are uncommon; sometimes collections of school essays surface, or drawings, but most of what archives typically hold is about children, not by them. Yet we are all simultaneously the children we were and the adults we became. So perhaps the child’s voice is not inaudible in the memories narrated by adults. While the title of this book may point towards it being about children, it is as almost as much about adults. Memories laid down in childhood now belong to adults, thus the sources are created by adults. The experiences, however, belong to children. Across the twentieth century there has been increasing interest in how war and other events distort or heighten memories, and therefore impact upon an individual’s sense of self. Psychologists and neuroscientists have v 41 v

Telling stories divided memories into sub-genres, several of which are relevant when considering the nature of oral history and childhood memory.36 First, the memories related in the interviews were autobiographical memories, and memories of bombing are likely to be ‘flashbulb’ memories: a particular type of autobiographical memory with a strong and highly personal significance. Berntsen and Thomsen found that when remembering distant events, those with a strong emotional connection tended to be recalled vividly and in more detail. Second, oral history deals with episodic memory, that is, the recall of specific events experienced at a particular place or time.37 In autobiographical narratives, episodic memory is interwoven with semantic memory, which describes remembered knowledge of the way the world works. This is what creates the oscillation between a remembered past and its present interpretation. However, as people age, there are differences in what they can and want to remember and forget. Distortions of memory can occur at any age, but when dealing with memories laid down in childhood, there are questions over how clearly that distant past can ever be recalled. Psychologists have found that recall of events experienced younger than five years old is very different to those experienced in adulthood, but events experienced between five and fifteen years old – like the majority of my interviewees – are remembered through a memory system similar to adult autobiographical memory. There is little reason to suppose that memories of childhood events experienced after five years old are any less faithful to the reality of the past than those from adulthood; they are, nonetheless, fragmented like all memories, and reconstructed into coherent narratives via the process of autobiographical memory.38 Even without recourse to the psychology of childhood memory, experience tells us that attempting to recall aspects of our own past is not entirely hopeless. Furthermore, childhood memories as told by adults are useful in oral history in spite of their potential deviation from a perfectly accurate replication: their interest also lies in expression, reconstruction and interpretation. Memories are narrated by the adult-from-the-child’s-future about the child-from-the-adult’s-past. While the two are distinct – and people are highly capable of making a distinction between past and present selves – they are also inseparably linked. People ‘are capable of reconstructing their past attitudes’ – that is, it is by no means impossible for a narrator to speak of him or herself, actions and thoughts in a past time that is clearly separate from now.39 We can learn about the past child, his or her behaviour, sensory experiences, some thoughts, some reasoning; through certain linguistic and rhetorical actions, access to a representation of the v 42 v

Telling stories child’s experience in the past is entirely possible. Oral history also reveals a further layer of subjective experience through the meaning that events create in the life of the child-now-adult.

A book about trauma? When I  interviewed people about being bombed, I  expected to hear many speak of trauma; they did not. Only two  – the youngest two women I interviewed, born in 1938 and 1939 – spontaneously reported traumatisation. Some others rejected the idea outright. Michel Thomas explained: ‘Well, I tell you very frankly, I am convinced that it did not traumatise me at all.’ Perhaps, I thought, bombing did not always traumatise children and initially I hesitated to use the word ‘trauma’ at all. Over time, I  have come to understand that this is indeed a study of trauma:  bombing is traumatic. But how people cope with trauma and traumatic memories, and how they understand and articulate traumatic events means that they do not necessarily see themselves as having been traumatised. In psychological research on children in Gaza, Barenbaum, Ruchkin and Schwab-Stone conclude that the potential for traumatisation depends on ‘individual interpretations of the traumatic experience and the context in which it occurs’.40 Individual interpretations are key; yet they are, of course, shaped by the social context of war and its memory. Symptoms of trauma are visible across many of the oral narratives of the Allied bombing of France that I collected. Trauma, however, extends beyond the psychological realm: the term is laden with social meaning and may be rejected for social reasons.41 Trauma is a duality:  an objective stressor and a subjective response, manifested through particular symptoms.42 The stressor is an event or series of events that involves ‘actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s physical integrity’ or that of another person. An air raid in close proximity fits these criteria. A traumatised response shows ‘intense fear, helplessness, or horror’.43 Given the inadequacy of bomb shelter provision in France, the surprise quality of many raids and the inevitability of destruction, the possibility of escape was limited; young children were further restricted by dependence on their parents for protection. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – one, but not the only, diagnostic tool – fall into three categories: intrusion, avoidance or constriction, and hyperarousal. The first includes nightmares, flashbacks, revisualisation, morbid rumination and feelings of guilt; the second includes numbness, detachment and hopelessness and reluctance v 43 v

Telling stories to talk of events; and the third includes difficulty concentrating, exaggerated startle responses and disproportionate anxiety. These symptoms are present in the oral narratives. (It should be emphasised that the presence of a symptom does not mean the person can, could or should be diagnosed with PTSD; PTSD was developed long after the Second World War, but it is nonetheless a useful framework for thinking about trauma.) Why was the trauma of bombing not studied in France at the time and in the immediate aftermath of war, as it was in Britain? As emaciated POWs, resistance fighters, deported workers and persecuted people returned home, concerns arose about reawakening wartime divisions in countries desperate to reconstruct. In France, all such returnees were labelled ‘deportees’; systems of support were developed for those suffering from ‘deportation pathology’, a diagnosis resting on a ‘fabricated universality’ of experience.44 What they had in common, however, was their wartime distance from French territory; little recognition was given to psychologically troubled civilians who had remained in France. The experience of bombing was buried under the moral and psychological reconstruction of a nation. Such historical circumstances restricted the expression of traumatic experience among parts of the French population. Part of the social context of trauma comes from the way the term has been used publicly. Sometimes trauma is seen as a collective phenomenon, a virus that spreads to infect entire societies.45 Yet ‘collective’ trauma mistakes an individual phenomenon for a shared one. It is too simplistic to state that experience is ‘never simply one’s own’;46 certainly, the external context of an event is shared by a ‘community of experience’. But social discourse about trauma is not, in itself, trauma. Individual experience and response are indeed one’s own – this is the very meaning of subjectivity. By collectivising trauma, a set of structures for remembering are established that exclude individuals whose experiences fall outside the grid. Second, certain scholarly discussions of trauma obscure the event at the heart of the traumatic experience; emphasis is placed instead on the inability to represent experience adequately, and the idea that any narrative reflects lived experience is rejected as naive.47 Yet this restrictive conceptualisation refuses to recognise the range of subjective responses to trauma expressed in myriad ways. Events are at the core of traumatic experience, yet there are more or less traumatising events, and more or less traumatised responses. In the oral narratives analysed here, clear connections with past events are made, but it is understood that speech, language and dialogue cannot replicate the past: a narrator is not a black v 44 v

Telling stories box recorder.48 Traumatising events are described in words, sometimes adequate, sometimes inadequate, but also articulated non-verbally. Narrators depict chains of events, clouds of circumstance, moods, pressures and intrusive influences in their interpretations. Instead of conceptualising trauma as ‘unrepresentable’, it seems more fruitful to understand the ways humans can share experience. Finally, the moral dimension of trauma’s social presence can also make it less desirable to ‘own’. Traumatised people are equated with ‘victims’ who are awarded high moral authority.49 This idea has arisen, perhaps, because of the concentration of trauma research by scholars into Holocaust and abuse narratives, and extends beyond the academy.50 Sometimes the two overlap, but, for example, perpetrators may also be traumatised by their own acts. In post-war France, the returning ‘deportees’ could well have been traumatised; they were also victims: the recognised trauma belongs to a recognised victim. But for civilians on French territory, trauma went unrecognised. The Allied bombs were aimed at targets not people; those potentially traumatised had not been victimised. Additionally, French civilians who did not participate in resistance activities (including the vast majority of children) have been ascribed a low moral authority:  they waited, they stood by, some even profited. When trauma is so strongly linked to victimhood it is perhaps unsurprising that those who reject victimhood also reject trauma. Using oral history has enabled textures of experience and particularly sensory experience to emerge. When coupled with administrative material from the archives, a full picture of lived experience within a particular context appeared. It was particularly noticeable that sounds of bombing mattered more and stuck in memory more than sights and smells. Oral history has also revealed routines and the adaptability of these children living with the threat of or in the aftermath of bombing; like the state and like local administrators, families and children developed coping strategies, some of which helped mitigate fear and reduce traumatic responses. The fine grain of experience – such as body postures in the bomb shelters or the sensations underfoot when stepping out into a bombed street – demonstrated that such experiences were shared from place to place, but always recounted differently, filtered through individual words, lives and interpretations. Children were highly dependent on their parents, but were tied into family and local networks; they derived physical and emotional security from these relationships and networks that were ruptured by family separation. Trauma was evident in many of the stories told, sometimes explicitly as with Édith Denhez’s story of v 45 v

Telling stories bereavement, sometimes through a loss of self-control and sometimes hidden in the structure of stories, or in tales of nightmares and lasting fears. It was not just the moment that bombs fell that provoked fear. The sights of chaos and death that greeted children in the aftermath left a psychological scar. Nonetheless, trauma could be mitigated, it appeared; it certainly seemed less of a preoccupation for those who were better able to understand what was happening at the time and afterwards. Thus explanations of bombing really mattered, highlighting the need to keep populations in danger honestly informed. But this trauma must be seen as a component part of experience but not the whole. Children in war are more than passive victims; in the chapters that follow, they also show understanding, agency, initiative, playfulness and resilience.

Notes 1 C. Baudelaire, ‘The painter of modern life’ (1863), in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. J. Mayne (London: Phaidon, 2006;), pp. 15–16. 2 W. Benjamin, ‘The storyteller: reflections on the work of Nicolai Leskov’, in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 92. 3 Wood, Vectors of Memory, p 17. This idea was echoed at an academic conference in Le Havre in September 2014:  several historians expressed, it seemed, a need or desire to move from ‘souvenirs’ to ‘Mémoire’ (personal memories to Memory, perhaps), as though the former were of less interest or value to historians. 4 R. Gildea, ‘The long march of oral history: around 1968 in France’, Oral History, 38.1 (2010), p. 70. Gildea is among many non-French historians of the Vichy era who have integrated archival and oral sources for many years. See also, for example, H. R. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942–1944 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1993)  or S.  Fishman, We Will Wait:  Wives of French Prisoners of War, 1940–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991). 5 P. Joutard and A.-M. Granet-Abisset, ‘Histoires de vie, histoire dans la vie. Philippe Joutard et l’histoire orale à la française’, Sociétés et Répresentations, 35.1 (2013), pp. 183–207; F. Descamps, F. Weber and B. Müller, ‘Archives orales et entretiens ethnographiques. Un débat entre Florence Descamps et Florence Weber, animé par Bertrand Müller’, Genèses, 62.1 (2006), pp. 93–109. 6 S. R. Suleiman, ‘History, heroism and narrative desire: national memory of the French resistance’, South Central Review, 21.1 (2004), pp. 54–81. 7 M. Fulbrook, ‘History writing and “collective memory” ’, in S. Berger and B.  Niven (eds.), Writing the History of Memory (London:  Bloomsbury, 2004), pp. 74–6.

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Telling stories 8 J. Agee and W. Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), p. xlvi, cited in D. James, Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory and Political Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 143. 9 AMBB 6H18: Police Inspector’s report, 13 September 1939, and letter to Mme Saulgrain (undated). Spelling errors were not reproduced in this translation. 10 R. Samuel, ‘Headington Quarry: recording a labouring community’, Oral History, 1.4 (1973), p. 120. 11 D. Bertaux, ‘From the life history approach to the transformation of sociological practice’, in D. Bertaux (ed.), Biography and Society (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), p. 40. 12 P. Thompson, ‘The voice of the past: oral history’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson, The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), hereafter TOHR, p. 22. 13 R. Samuel and P.  Thompson (eds.), The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 2–3. 14 P. O’Farrell, ‘Oral history:  facts and fiction’, Oral History Association of Australia Journal, 5 (1982–83), p. 8. 15 A. Portelli, ‘What makes oral history different’, in TOHR, p. 67. 16 J. Harding, ‘Talk about care: emotions, culture and oral history’, Oral History, 38.2 (2010), p. 34. See also J. Harding, ‘Looking for trouble: exploring emotion, memory and public sociology’, Oral History, 42.2 (2014), pp. 94–104. 17 P. Thompson, ‘The voice of the past’, p. 24. 18 L. Dodd, ‘Small fish, big pond: using a single oral narrative to reveal broader social change’, in J.  Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History:  Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (London: Routledge, 2013). 19 There is disagreement as to the extent of changes to the recording and transcript that an interviewee might be encouraged to make. I followed the advice given in Donald A. Ritchie’s Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), pp. 45–6: that no changes would be made to the master recording, but that additions and changes could be made to the transcript. In practice, only minor amendments  – typographical errors, changes to dates and the spelling of names – were communicated to me be a few of the interviewees. Researchers wishing for a greater level of ‘shared authority’ between the parties might seek to give interviewees far greater control over the recording and transcript, but I did not have the resources to pursue that goal during this project (on the difficulties of sharing authority more generally, see the special issue of Oral History Review, 30.1 (2003) dedicated to that topic). 20 B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (Chicago: Aldine, 1967). In their groundbreaking work, Glaser and Strauss advocated an approach to qualitative research

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Telling stories where theory emerges from the empirical data, instead of a priori theoretical assumptions being tested against data. Turning contemporary sociological practice on its head, they kicked against the tendency towards the verification of existing theory and instead created a methodology that, they believed, generated theoretical insights that had a much truer fit to the data and a greater capacity for usefulness. 21 Baldoli and Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes. 22 A. Portelli, ‘Research as an experiment in equality’, in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories:  Form and Meaning in Oral History (New York: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 31, 43. 23 There are many excellent analyses of intersubjectivity in oral history interviewing. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, in Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York and London: Routledge, 1991) pioneered analyses that took in gender, ethnicity and unequal power relations; Daniel James’ essay ‘Listening in the cold’ in Doña Maria’s Story (pp. 119–56) provides an interesting critique of subjectivities in conflict within the interview; Alistair Thomson’s Moving Stories: An Intimate History of Four Women across Two Countries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) is masterful in its attention to exploring the relationship between the researcher and the women credited rightfully as co-authors of the book. 24 Maurice Masse (Boulogne-Billancourt), letter to L. Dodd, 8 February 2009. 25 P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 37. 26 Fulbrook, ‘History writing’, pp. 78, 84. 27 A.  de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (Cambridge:  Sever & Francis, 1863; trans. H. Reeve), extracted in J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi and D.  Levy (eds.), The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 69. 28 H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 29 A. Thomson, Anzac Memories:  Living with the Legend (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1994). See also A.  Green, ‘Individual remembering and “collective memory”:  theoretical presuppositions and contemporary debates’, Oral History, 32.2 (2004), pp. 35–43. 30 A. Portelli, ‘The death of Luigi Trastulli:  memory and the event’, in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories:  Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 1, 26. 31 V. R. Yow, Recording Oral History (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), p. 11. 32 R. J. Grele, ‘Movement without aim: methodological and theoretical problems in oral history’ in TOHR, p. 41. 33 A. Portelli, ‘The best garbage man in town:  life and times of Valtèro Peppoloni, worker’, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories:  Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991), p. 137.

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Telling stories 34 L. Danforth and R.  Van Boeschoten, Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory (London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 8. 35 L. Jordanova, ‘Children in history:  concepts of nature and society’, in G.  Scarre (ed.), Children, Parents and Politics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 5. 36 See, for example, G.  Cohen and M.  Conway (eds.), Memory in the Real World, 3rd edn (Hove: Psychology Press, 2008). 37 D. Berntsen and D.  Thomsen, ‘Personal memories relating to historical events: accuracy and clarity of flashbulb memories relating to World War II’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134.2 (2005), pp. 242–57. 38 C. Wells, C. Morrison and M. Conway, ‘Adult recollections of childhood memories: what details can be recalled?’ Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67.7 (2013), pp. 1249–61. 39 Portelli, ‘What makes oral history different’, p. 69. 40 J. Barenbaum, V. Ruchkin and M. Schwab-Stone, ‘The psychosocial aspects of children exposed to war: practice and policy initiatives’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45.1 (2004), pp. 42–4. 41 S. Leydesdorff, G. Dawson, N. Burchardt and T. G. Ashplant, ‘Introduction’ in S. Leydesdorff and K. L. Rogers (with G. Dawson) (eds.), Trauma and Life Stories: International Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 5. 42 S. Vees-Gulani, Trauma and Guilt:  Literature of Wartime Bombing in Germany (Berlin:  Walter de Gruyter & Co, 2003), p.  26, referring to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV [DSM-IV] (Washington, DC:  American Psychiatric Association, 1994), p 464. Vees-Gulani also uses DSM-IV-TR (Washington, DC:  American Psychiatric Association, 2000). 43 J. Robinett, ‘The narrative shape of traumatic experience’, Literature and Medicine, 26.2 (2007), p. 293, citing DSM-IV, p. 424. 44 M. Steinberg, ‘Les dérives plurielles de la mémoire d’Auschwitz’, Centrale: périodique trimestriel de la vie communautaire juive, 260 (1993), pp. 11–14, quoted in P. Lagrou, ‘Victims of genocide and national memory: Belgium, France and the Netherlands, 1945–1965’, Past & Present, 154 (1997), p. 184; M. T. Brancaccio, ‘From “deportation pathology” to “traumatismes psychiques de guerre”: trauma and reparation in post-war France (1940s–1990s)’, in J. Withuis and A. Mooij (eds.), Politics of War Trauma:  The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries (Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, 2010), p. 79. 45 Vees-Gulani, Trauma and Guilt, p. 19. 46 C. Caruth, ‘Unclaimed experience: trauma and the possibility of history’, Yale French Studies, 79 (1991), p. 192. 47 J. Berger, ‘Trauma and literary theory’, Contemporary Literature, 38.3 (1997), p.  573; C.  Caruth, Trauma:  Explorations in Memory (Baltimore:  Johns

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Telling stories Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 10, cited in Robinett, ‘Narrative shape’, p. 290. 48 Berger, ‘Trauma and literary theory’, p. 571. 49 Vees-Gulani, Trauma and Guilt, p. 20. 50 R. Reynolds, ‘Trauma and the relational dynamics of life-history interviewing’, Australian Historical Studies, 43.1 (2012), p. 82.

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Part I

Expecting bombing

v 2 v

Expecting war

Michel Thomas:  When we were children, we were surrounded by men who’d been in the First World War, people from our building. There was one who’d lost a leg, very high up, and he had a wooden leg. Our father’s brother had been killed in Souchez, the great offensive, the Chemin des Dames. We knew some of our schoolteachers had been in the First World War too. So for me, I can tell you what I felt, because I think I was quite well-informed. After school each evening, I had to go and buy the newspaper for my grandmother. It was called Paris-Soir. And I used to read it. I was seven, eight, nine years old, and I read the paper. I have very clear memories, for example, of the Spanish Civil War, news about the bombing of Valencia, the battle of Madrid, you see. Between Franco and the Republicans. I  remember very clearly the invasion of Albania by Mussolini in 1938, and I remember the Anschluss very clearly too. I was really aware of that. We felt like war was just a normal part of things. It was part of our life. And in 1939, I remember my reaction when they declared war. All around you, you heard: ‘Ah, we have the best army in the world, we’re the strongest and our generals are very skilful.’ But I do think that the people who said that – and I remember our father said that – they didn’t really seem to believe it. They themselves didn’t believe it. I  felt that we’d won in 1914, but this time no. We’d seen German propaganda, we used to go to the cinema to see the news, and we saw Nuremburg, the Germans, their discipline, their ceremonies, and it made us afraid, eh! I’m not making this up, not at all. Because as a child I was very, very attentive. And when in 1940 on 10 May I came home from school and I heard about the great German offensive, we all knew it was over. We understood straight away. Claude Thomas: We weren’t surprised. Michel Thomas: Not surprised at all! We weren’t surprised. War didn’t take us by surprise.

Brothers Michel and Claude Thomas may have been unusual in the curiosity that they shared about the world around them, which brought them v 53 v

Expecting bombing into contact with news and current affairs. Born in 1929, during the later 1930s Michel was old enough to move around the town on his own and, with his younger brother, avidly absorbed the contents of newspapers and newsreels. Their comments about the mood of expectation are reflected in contemporary sources. The writer Julien Green, resident in Paris, noted in his diary in 1930: ‘I am resigned to living in the expectation of disaster.’1 War was in the air in interwar Europe, a potentially apocalyptic future war, born out of the memory and legacy of past war, fuelled by the observation of present wars and the escalation of diplomatic tensions.2 War was, it seems, expected. But was it expected by children and, if so, was bombing part of their expectation? Claude and Michel Thomas were perhaps unusual, but there is no reason to suspect that they were unique. They inhabit one end of a spectrum of understandings that was evident among those of the older interviewees who could recall the interwar period. Yet while discussion of war surrounded them, bombing remained little known.

Future war Over the world of elite publishing, the threat of apocalyptic future war hung like a cloud, drizzling droplets of fear that watered the popular press.3 The French feared invasion as much as, if not more than, bombing. Apocalypse could come from the air, but hell could arrive by land, as 1870 and 1914–18 had shown. The Geneva Disarmament Conference was a failure for French hopes of restraint; Hitler withdrew in October 1933, and published details of the increased German military budget in 1934. By March 1935, with all pretence of observing Versailles conditions discarded, a peacetime army of 550,000 men was authorised, and the German Air Force officialised.4 The Rhineland reoccupation in March 1936 brought war a leap closer. It seemed that the ‘ever-present German menace’ was ‘stronger than ever’.5 In France, public discourse on future war described a nation defended by land, sea and air. Yet a contradiction lurked within: civilians needed to learn to defend themselves in case military defence failed. French military thinking during the interwar years was characterised by defensive planning and few offensive strategies were developed. New technology was fitted into a model of warfare defined by mass firepower and covered defensive positions.6 Unlike in Britain, where the Trenchard doctrine envisaged the development of a strategic air force to use as the prime offensive weapon, the French air force was designed to v 54 v

Expecting war support the other services. Although Giulio Douhet’s ideas were gaining currency in France, it was too late to build a bomber force capable of rivalling the Luftwaffe.7 The Maginot Line symbolised French defensive planning and was intended to channel an assault through Belgium, beyond which the massed firepower of the French army lay in wait. Press and cinema supported the official position on defensive strategies and French strength, often with official endorsement. The Maginot Line, the French army and France’s empire and allies were frequent stars of films and newsreels during the 1930s.8 But official thinking perceived the air threat too. Instruction manuals issued by the Défense Passive (see Figure 1) illustrated the obstacles enemy planes would face before they reached their targets: detected by look-out and listening posts, French fighter planes would intercept them, batteries of anti-aircraft fire would fire and mobile barrage balloons would shield civilians.9 Défense passive was the name given to civil defence measures – for example, blackout, gas mask and bomb shelter provision, sand distribution, clearance, poison gas disinfection, specialist training and coordination of first aiders, firefighters – as well as the body that coordinated them (défense passive for the measures and Défense Passive – capital letters – for the organising body). All told, the image projected was of protected borders and an active air defence. If everything was so well planned, surely there was a contradiction in the idea of défense passive that required the population to participate in its own defence. The Défense Passive helped create the idea of future war through its educative output. Brochures often start with an instruction: if possible, leave.10 They contain information about military aviation, and discuss the effects of explosives, incendiaries and toxic gases. Brochures that gave about advice about shelters, masks, blackout and injuries painted a frightening picture. In early 1939, cinemagoers in Brest would have seen on screen the message ‘Think about défense passive: darkness is the best defence against aerial attacks’, and the Prefect of Finistère also recommended that Mayor Victor Le Gorgeu purchase several public information films from the Défense Passive.11 Posters appeared carrying air raid instructions, and local press carried cut-out-and-keep advice.12 Public conferences were organised in Lille and in Brest from 1933, aimed at ‘schoolchildren, shopkeepers, the retired’.13 Exercises and drills tested the functioning of local défense passive measures, some using fake bombs, others simulating poison gas attack, some testing evacuation procedures and many examining blackout and sirens. People saw trench-shelters being dug in public parks, and the censuses that were v 55 v

Expecting bombing taken of bomb-proof cellars provided early contact with personnel of the Défense Passive. Some householders received deliveries of sand during September 1938 as a protection against incendiaries.14 The official material of the Défense Passive was supported by a wider unofficial discourse on aerial attack evident in the advertising strategies of companies selling fire extinguishers or escape ladders, and through new, higher insurance premiums for wartime.15 Chemical warfare appeared to be the greatest fear. Discussed at length by experts, there was also popular interest, Mysyrowicz citing a spate of interwar novels set in the aftermath of a chemical apocalypse.16 Poison gas represented the ultimate weapon, ‘capable in a few minutes of destroying all life in a large city like Paris’.17 The French population was thus exposed, via official and unofficial channels, to future war as potential catastrophe. Yet it appears little in the personal narratives I  recorded; or at least, people remembered little of any discussions. For the younger interviewees, this period was beyond recall anyway. Christian de la Bachellerie (Boulogne-Billancourt), an older interviewee born in 1924, said ‘we didn’t really speak about war. We felt quite calm.’ For André Dutilleul (Hellemmes), the subject entered conversations ‘just before the war […] But before that, in our family, we didn’t mention it.’ Apocalyptic future war, about which so much ink had flowed, was not an everyday concern – or if it was, it was not for children’s ears. Paul Termote (Hellemmes) reasoned that he heard nothing about future war because ‘parents didn’t speak in front of the children. If they spoke about war, it was when they were alone.’ Censoring discussions limited children’s understanding of war. The parts of official discourse that reached them were positive and reassuring. Michel Floch said that ‘here’, in Brest, ‘we thought that France was solid. They’d built the Maginot Line.’ Some children – especially boys – were familiar with the French army’s famous strength. Max Potter’s (La Chapelle) toy soldiers were ‘invincible French soldiers, of course!’ Anxieties about apocalyptic war, it seemed, were not reflected back into the children’s world. Visions of future war do not seem to have sparked memorable activity, or inspired fear or anxiety.

Past war On the other hand, the First World War had a strong presence in many of the oral narratives, demonstrating the powerful impact of 1914–18 during the interwar years. For children, who lacked the political, cultural or social ability or need to instrumentalise war memory, the ‘local, particular, v 56 v

Expecting war parochial and familial forms’ of remembering created an understanding firmly rooted in the domestic universe.18 A pervasive national memory of the war – or a collective, public, cultural or social one, or perhaps all of those – intruded into the consciousnesses of children born years later. National, local and family memories were transmitted from grandparents to children and grandchildren. That fears worked their way into children’s lives, and existed still in adult narrators’ memories suggests that children were by no means ignorant of the realities of the public world of war. But, as will be seen, their understanding was limited. And of course, dwelling on the previous war left everybody unprepared for the war that arrived. French victory in the Great War came at a high price:  1.3  million dead, more than a million men disabled and three million partially so; 900,000 buildings, 9,000 factories, 200 coal mines, 6,000 bridges and 2,400 kilometres of railway destroyed; international debts and a lasting demographic problem.19 Official acts of commemoration sought to channel anger and disillusionment. Into the ossuary at Verdun were placed the bones of 130,000 men, cemeteries stretched and multiplied, and war memorials sprung up, as de Busscher writes, like mushrooms after a storm.20 The First World War was also prominent in popular culture during the interwar period, its appearance reflecting the public mood. Benteli notes that in all war and spy films of 1938 and 1939, Germany was the only enemy.21 The strong current of pacifism running through French society was born out of the losses of 1914–18. The First World War left millions of ‘primary mourners’ – those who had lost a close relative.22 But children did not need to have lost family members to be aware. As Michel Thomas (Boulogne-Billancourt) said, veterans were plentiful and their injuries aroused curiosity, suggesting the scale of war and its impact on the human body.23 Some children actively sought out information about the war. Michel Floch (Brest) said that ‘war for me was all of my father’s writings […], and the books that he brought back’; for him, this past war was an exciting story, strongly linked to his father’s adventures. However, for Yvette Chapalain (Brest), books fixed past war firmly in the past. It existed ‘in history books at school. That was all.’ An objective event confined to the classroom, it simply did not interest her. The level of engagement with knowledge of this past war depended on interest or observation. Oral transmission within the family was also important in developing children’s understanding of past war; indeed, this ‘postmemory’ is an important site for research into longer-term and transgenerational v 57 v

Expecting bombing impacts of traumatic events such as war.24 Family and kinship networks play a key role in ‘connecting and transmitting overlapping memories’.25 Winter has described the way in which ‘younger people, uninitiated into the actual experience, carry emotion-laden stories very effectively’.26 Some found family war stories exciting. Michel Floch (Brest) read his father’s letters, while Christian de la Bachellerie (Boulogne-Billancourt) loved hearing his father’s comrades telling their stories over dinner. Henri Girardon’s father (Lambézellec) had been a pilot in World War I, and his achievements were a source of inspiration and pride. Family histories could, of course, be tragedies too. The Nord was occupied by the Germans during the First World War, and Édith Denhez’s mother and father (Cambrai) both experienced hardship and fear. Her mother had told her of unbearable hunger, but her father had suffered worse. His father and brothers were hiding arms from the Germans, and refused to surrender them when soldiers arrived. Édith’s grandmother, still breastfeeding her ninth child, was taken prisoner as a punishment:  ‘she was beaten for several days in prison and died’, Édith said. War behind the frontline could also be devastating. In Brest, far from old battlefields, Yvette Chapalain said that she did not understand ‘the drama that was war’; but in the Nord Édith knew – even if her parents spoke of it rarely – that ‘the last war had been very, very difficult’. ‘It’s heavy’, she said of the emotional burden that her family had to carry. Sometimes war left clear physical traces, such as the loss of a relative. In other cases, the impact was psychological. Sonia Agache’s father (Hellemmes) was profoundly marked by his service at the front. He rejected attempts to channel ex-servicemen’s anger:  ‘on 11 November, he’d never march in the parade’; the prospect of another war produced in him ‘furious rages because he said “no” to war’. Other fathers were the ‘men returned from the battlefield grown silent’.27 Michèle Martin’s father in Boulogne-Billancourt was unwilling to speak of it: ‘for him, it was something horrendous’. Likewise for Michel Jean-Bart (Lomme), the veterans around him ‘kept their war business to themselves. They didn’t want us to know the great sadness of war.’ While Michèle interpreted her father’s silence as a consequence of his troubled memories, Michel saw it as a move to protect the innocent. In both cases, it shielded children from knowledge. Parents also held received memories, from their own parents, which they transmitted. Bernard Lemaire’s (Lille) parents had been too young to go to war, but ‘they talked about the uhlans, and I  think that when they spoke of them it was because they could see, they could feel war coming […] They were afraid during 1935, 1936, 1937 that war v 58 v

Expecting war was coming.’ Bernard saw their evocations of past war as manifestations of anxieties about the present. Living close to former battlefields, Sonia Agache in Hellemmes said: ‘I was scared by what they said […] they told us so much about the enemy.’ She made a connection between the stories she was told and her fearful expectations. Thus even when knowledge was passively acquired, rather than the result of active engagement with information sources, it provoked anxious responses in some children. During the First World War, 275 Parisians were killed and 636 injured during twenty-three air raids.28 But the development of bombers appears to have concerned children little. Some had an interest in aviation, Henri Girardon (Lambézellec) because of his father’s piloting during the Great War, and Christian de la Bachellerie because he lived near to the Farman factory in Boulogne-Billancourt. Michèle Martin was aware of aeroplanes because ‘my dad was interested in planes, and in Boulogne we had several aircraft factories. In Issy-les-Moulinaux they did trials […] and sometimes we’d go to Villacoublay to see the air shows.’ She was exposed to aviation but added, ‘but I didn’t understand anything about it at all’. It was a passive encounter that did not excite her curiosity. Sonia Agache’s mother, a Parisian, had been in Paris when Big Bertha ‘was firing night and day’. Yet for Sonia in Hellemmes there were worse perils than cannon. Parisians were bombarded, ‘but they at least stayed French. They weren’t under German domination.’ Regional experience dictated the shape of expectation. Cécile Bramé felt sure that war could never get as far as Brest: ‘I’d heard my godfather speaking of the 1914–18 war at the front. “Well, well,” I  told myself, “that’s where it will stay.” ’ Even if the front crept further west, searching further back in time maintained a feeling of security in Brest. Henri Girardon commented that ‘we’d had the experience of ’71 when the Germans didn’t get past Paris’. The zeppelins and planes of the First World War had not yet breached the divide between home and war fronts in these children’s minds. Indeed, nothing was more frightening than the enemy. Children’s books exposed readers to a portrait of Germans as savage and barbaric, the legacy of the previous war’s propaganda.29 ‘Lurid atrocity tales’ of mutilation and murder were widespread and transmitted across the generations, creating real Germanophobia.30 Jean Pochart from Brest remarked that ‘we were pretty much brought up on a deep hatred of the German. At that time, the goodies were the French, and the baddies were the Germans.’ Michel Floch, also from Brest, suggested the way in which hatred in the adult world translated into fear in the child’s: ‘They’d tell us that the Boches were coming and they’d cut children’s hands off. It really v 59 v

Expecting bombing put the wind up us.’ Jean Pochart agreed: ‘It was a gut-wrenching fear.’ Occupation in the Nord had rooted such imagined horrors in reality. Thérèse Leclercq’s mother was four years old when the Germans occupied her house during the First World War, and transferred her childhood fears to her children. Thérèse understood her past suffering, but, like several others, commented critically on ‘that big word – hatred – of the Germans. Hatred, hatred.’ Through their vigorous hatred, adults planted anxiety in their children’s minds. André Dutilleul (Hellemmes) remarked that by the beginning of the war, ‘they’d created a climate of terror’, which of course had serious consequences in May–June 1940 as people fled the oncoming German army. Thérèse believed that her mother feared the Germans ‘more than bombing’: this focus on the enemy, and not his machines, undermined preparations against air attack. Knowledge and understanding of the public world of war depended on age and (to a degree) gender; the older male interviewees among those I  interviewed  – such as Henri Girardon, Christian de la Bachellerie, Michel Thomas, Michel Floch and André Dutilleul  – had taken more interest in past war, particularly tales of heroics and comradeship. In their cases, knowledge came from an active engagement with sources of information, but in others  – more of the female interviewees, and the younger ones  – it resulted from a passive observation of the effects of war. Knowledge, when acquired, changed them, enabling them to interpret better further clues, and sometimes gave rise to fear and anxiety. Learning about 1914–18 gave some of the children a familiarity with some of the features of war: its scope, consequences, horror, combat, the enemy. But the national preoccupation with remembering that war also limited understanding of what might come.

Present war Future war had little presence in the children’s lives, then, and past war painted an outmoded picture. But conflicts unfolding in the present brought children an understanding of modern warfare. Although Spain, China and Abysinnia were distant, the events of the fateful Septembers in 1938 and 1939 brought present war onto French children’s doorsteps. Of the thirty million people visiting the Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques de la vie moderne in Paris during 1937, many saw Picasso’s Guernica, a graphic representation of modern war. The painting showed civilians targeted, reflecting a reality known to the population through newsreels and in illustrated magazines. Spain’s prominent v 60 v

Expecting war role in the controversies that crippled the Popular Front government and the influx of 460,000 Spanish refugees into France made this conflict highly visible.31 Max Potter’s father was a Daily Mail journalist in Paris, and this exposed him to current affairs. Spain was in the press, but so was Abyssinia, which, he recalled, ‘I remember seeing, even at seven years old’. The photographs in illustrated magazines brought new knowledge. At nine years old, Robert Belleuvre and his friends were interested too: ‘Among my school friends, we’d bring different pictures in. We’d share them around.’ Children were not only passive observers; some of them – boys here – actively sought out information to feed their curiosity. It was not only the press that brought knowledge, but also observations of the world around them. The Spanish refugee children who arrived in Brest were an awakening for Serge Aubrée: it was ‘the first time I’d really understood the word war’. Knowing about war was not the same as knowing about bombing, however. Cécile Bramé, also in Brest, remembered that her mother gave old clothes to the Spanish children, but she did not know the cause of their plight. All she knew was ‘what I saw: the distress of these Spanish children who’d arrived here’. Observation led here to partial understanding. Likewise, Robert Belleuvre (Boulogne-Billancourt) said that when adults talked about Guernica, ‘we didn’t really know what it was. We heard them speak of it, though, and it stuck in your mind.’ Robert said that his half-formed ideas still created a certain anxiety: ‘As the adults were talking about that situation over there, it was natural that we youngsters took on board some of the things they said with a certain amount of apprehension.’ Children drew conclusions from the adults’ conversations around them; for Robert, ‘you couldn’t help but think that the same thing could happen to us’. For Michel Thomas, these present wars indicated that conflict was on France’s doorstep: ‘it wasn’t far away’, he said. Distance was construed differently by Max Potter. He was aware of conflict in Spain, Abyssinia and China, but it did not make him anxious as ‘it was so far away’. Was he worried it could happen in France? Emphatically, ‘absolutely not!’ Present wars to him were an exotic and distant curiosity. The Munich crisis of September 1938 changed the tempo. While few people viewed war as a certainty, the odds had narrowed and expectation shifted from an imagined future to now. Alexander Werth commented that during the ‘scare week’, ‘Paris felt pretty helpless’: very little, it seemed, had been done to protect the population from attack.32 After Munich, legislating for défense passive accelerated, bringing evidence of nascent war into civilian lives, as the next chapter will show. Yet for v 61 v

Expecting bombing the first time, there was evidence of war here, now, in their streets, in children’s own families. Spain was a catalyst for some; for others it was Munich. Jean Pochart (Brest) said, ‘I became conscious of it at Munich […] people were really talking about the imminence of war’. Holidays and peacetime seemed to be coming to an end together. The partial mobilisation in France on 24 September 1938 created ripples that lapped at the edges of everyday occurrence, visible in some of the narratives. Christian Solet watched unusual activities in the streets around his home. Memories are interspersed with the adult’s later knowledge, but in between, we glimpse the street through the child’s eyes: ‘I can vaguely recall – because at the time I was only six – that there was an early mobilisation before the Munich treaty, and they’d already requisitioned lorries and trucks, and we saw them all driving down Boulevard Serrurier, and they were already painted in camouflage.’ The memory is not of Munich, politics or even mobilisation. It is of strangely painted trucks and lorries. There seems to be no emotional link to this event – he was too young to understand what he was seeing – yet at six years old, Christian registered that this was something unusual. September 1938 developed anxiety, uneasiness or the expectation of war in some of the children’s minds. A  year later, war became personal. It was not lorries that disappeared, requisitioned for the front, it was fathers. On 1 September 1939, Germany declared war on Poland, and Britain and France responded with their own declarations two days later. Parisian children on summer holidays were advised to stay away, and thousands of others were evacuated from the city. But what effect did the declaration of war have on children who knew little of the terrible visions put forward in the adult world, but who had some understanding of war? Lucien Agache’s mother had died in 1938; he and his sister went to live with their grandparents when their father was mobilised. They did not see him for over a year. Lucien said: ‘I don’t know that a child of seven or eight years old can really understand much when there’s a declaration of war. Apart from being separated from his parents, from his father.’ The declaration meant parting and upheaval. Mobilisation affected domestic arrangements in other ways. Danielle Durville was born on 1 September 1939. Her father went away to fight and was taken prisoner. She said: ‘On 3 September, my dad left for the war. I only met him in 1945 when he came back. It was pretty hard.’ The shock of the ‘stranger in the house’ disrupted the only family life she had ever known.33 Public events impact on the child’s world in very particular ways, largely when they enter the domestic sphere. The declaration was not universally recalled as a v 62 v

Expecting war

Figure  1  Pre-war Défense Passive manual (n.d.):  ‘French people  – for your safety consult this brochure. The ABC of Défense Passive.’ watershed. Yvette Chapalain said that among her siblings, ‘the declaration of war, for us children, no it didn’t really bother us’. Cécile Bramé took comfort in Germany’s distance from Brest: ‘I said to myself “we’re so far away”.’ Elsewhere, however, it provoked real concern. In Cambrai, Édith Denhez’s mother and father ‘were horrified […] In the other war, they’d been hungry, there’d been cold-blooded killing, things like that. So v 63 v

Expecting bombing when war was declared, there was panic.’ This event touched some families very little and some excessively. War had a constant presence in these children’s early lives. Reverberations from the Great War created an understanding of what war was. But it was the present, the here and now, which most affected them. Jean Pochart remembered listening to the radio news: ‘You felt like it was rising, it was rising, the danger was growing day by day. Even as a kid, you listened, there was anxiety.’ Children had some idea of where a deterioration of European relations might lead, but there was still a gap between the child’s world and the adult’s. Michel Thomas commented that ‘it didn’t match up with anything we’d experienced [so] it formed part of the background, the wallpaper, the environment. It was our environment, but we weren’t the victims or the actors.’ Soon, however, the children assumed a more active role as preparations for bombing required all citizens to take responsibility for their collective safety.

Notes 1 J. Green, Les Années Faciles, 1928–1934 (Paris: Plon, 1960), p. 28. 2 R. Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilisation, 1919–1939 (London:  Allen Lane, 2009); for France specifically, see L.  Mysyrowicz, Autopsie d’une défaite: origines de l’effondrement militaire français de 1940 (Lausanne:  Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 1973)  and E.  Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994). 3 For example, Green, Années Faciles, pp.  28, 107, 168; Mysyrowicz cites Eugène Dabit from 1934 and 1936, Paul Léautaud and Daniel-Rops in 1934, plus articles from 1934 and 1926 (Mysyrowicz, Autopsie, pp.  196, 310–22). Examples of a pessimistic popular press include Je sais tout in June 1934 ‘Alerte aux gaz! Nous ne sommes pas prets!’ (AMBB, 6H3). 4 A. B. Sinclair, ‘The French perceptions and responses to German rearmament, 1932–1935’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California at Irvine, 1990), pp. 54–5, 142, 235, 326, 401. 5 A. Werth, The Twilight of France. 1933–40 (London:  Hamish Hamilton, 1942), p. 85. 6 D. E.  Showalter, ‘Plans, weapons, doctrines:  the strategic cultures of interwar Europe’, in R.  Chickering and S.  Förster (eds.), The Shadows of Total War:  Europe, East Asia and the United States, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 64. 7 T. Baumann and D.  M. Segesser, ‘Shadows of total war in British and French military journals’, in Chickering and Förster, Shadows of Total War, pp. 219–21.

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Expecting war 8 M. Benteli, D. Jay, and J.-P. Jeancolas, ‘Le cinema français: thèmes et public’, in R. Rémond and J. Bourdin (eds.), La France et les français en 1938–9 (Paris:  Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, Paris, 1978), pp. 33, 37; C. Rearick, The French in Love and War: Popular Culture in the Era of the World Wars (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 235; A. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914–1940 (London: Hodder Arnold, 1995), pp. 166–7. 9 AMBB, 6H3: Le manuel de la défense passive, p. 12. 10 For example, AMBB, 6H3: Recommandations à la population civile pour se protéger en cas d’attaque aérienne (published by L’Intransigeant in collaboration with the journal L’armée moderne, undated), p. 1. 11 AMCB, 4H4.14:  René Marie (Deputy to the Maritime Prefect for Local Air Defence) to cinema owners in Brest, 27 February 1939; AMCB, 4H4.14: Prefect of Finistère to Mayor of Brest, 19 July 1939. 12 AMBB, 6H7: for example, poster ‘Mesures de protection contre les effets des bombardements aériens,’ 12 October 1935; AMCB, 4H4.15: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 27 October 1938. 13 AMCB, 4H4.14:  Report on evolution of défense passive in Brest by Monsieur Lallemand (President of the Coordinating Committee for the Défense Passive in Greater Brest) undated, early 1936. 14 AMCB, 4H4.14:  La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 5 March 1938; AMCB, 4H4.14:  La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 1 July 1938; ADN (Archives Départementales du Nord), 25W.38134:  ‘Exercices d’évacuation’, Prefecture of the Nord, 22 May 1937; for example, AMCB, 4H4.14:  René Marie to Mayor of Brest, 3 November 1938; AMBB, 6H6:  Police Commissioner of Paris to Chief Police Superintendent of Boulogne-Billancourt, 3 April 1939; AMCB, 4H4.14: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 18 March 1938; AMCB, 4H4.14, ‘Rapport du Président de la commission urbaine de la défense passive’, undated (1936 or after); ADN, 25W.38134: ‘Résumé du réunion du 28 décembre 1933’; AMBB, 6H4: ‘Rapport du service locale de défense passive au sujet de l’état de protection de Boulogne-Billancourt à la date du 15 novembre 1939’; AMBB, 6H4:  Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to building owners and concierges, 14 September 1938. 15 L’Œuvre, 22 April 1935, in Mysyrowicz, Autopsie, p.  319; a fine array of advertisements is found in AMBB, 6H3. 16 Baumann and Segesser, ‘Shadows of total war’, p. 217; Weber, Hollow Years, p. 238; Mysyrowicz, Autopsie, pp. 305–8. 17 G. Ferrero, writing in L’Europe, 15 September 1931, pp.  5–6, cited in Mysyrowicz, Autopsie, p. 319. 18 J. Winter, ‘Forms of kinship and remembrance in the aftermath of the Great War’, in J. Winter and E. Sivan (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 40.

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Expecting bombing 19 A. Sauvy, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres (Paris: Fayard, 1965–75), Vol. I, p. 31. 20 J.-M.  de Busscher, ‘A l’ombre des monuments des morts’, in O.  Barrot and P.  Ory (eds.), Entre deux guerres:  La création française 1919–1939 (Paris:  François Bourrin, 1990), p.  14; A.  Prost, ‘Les monuments aux morts:  Culte républicain? Culte civique? Culte patriotique?’, in P.  Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, Vol. I: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), p. 200. 21 Rearick, French in Love and War, pp. 40, 60–6; Benteli et al., ‘Le cinema français’, pp. 31–2. 22 J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 6. 23 Bezançon notes that by 1915 in Boulogne-Billancourt, 7,500 families were receiving an allocation militaire, meaning that the breadwinner was a soldier, and about 2,000 men lost their lives in the war (A. Bezançon (with A. Gaye and G. Caillet, Histoire de Boulogne-Billancourt (Boulogne-Billancourt:  Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt and Éditions Joël Cuénot, 1984), pp. 70–2). The town had a pre-war population of 57,000 (http://cassini.ehess.fr/cassini/fr). 24 M. Hirsch, Family Frames:  Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 25 T. G.  Ashplant, G.  Dawson and M.  Roper (eds.), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 29. 26 Winter and Sivan, War and Remembrance, p. 18. 27 Benjamin, ‘The storyteller’, p. 84. 28 S. Grayzel, ‘ “The souls of soldiers”: civilians under fire in First World War France’, The Journal of Modern History, 78.3 (2006), pp. 595–6. 29 Brown, French Children’s Literature, pp. 194–8. 30 J. Horne and A. Kramer, ‘War between soldiers and enemy civilians, 1914–1915’, in R. Chickering and S. Förster (eds.), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 154. 31 S. Soo, ‘Ambiguities at work: Spanish Republican exiles and the Organisation Todt in Occupied Bordeaux’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15.4 (2007), pp. 459–60. 32 A. Werth, France and Munich Before and After the Surrender (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1939), pp. 273–314. 33 J. Summers, Stranger in the House: Women’s Stories of Men Returning from the Second World War (London: Simon and Schuster, 2008).

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v 3 v

Preparing for bombs

Robert Belleuvre: There were some covered shelters in place du Parchamps in Boulogne, in rue de l’Ancienne Mairie, opposite my school. I took cover there when the Germans bombed on 3 June 1940 […]. Blocks of flats needed to have been built in a certain way in order to withstand bombing, so not all buildings were considered safe shelters. In rue de Silly where I lived, if you wanted to get to a shelter, you had to go outside, fifty metres away. Other neighbours from buildings on either side would go down into the same shelters. But when you’re caught out, as we were in 1942, the first thing you do is to go to the cellar of the nearest building! Afterwards, we thought that although the cellar was quite good, if a bomb had fallen on the building, what would have happened? Everybody buried alive. Or, the bomb could have fallen sideways, which often happened, and blown up the building, and the people who were already inside would have been dead before the building went up! When the siren sounded in June 1940, all of us children went to the shelters in the park across the road. Lindsey Dodd: Wasn’t there a shelter at your school? Robert Belleuvre: Oh, no! No, no. But we fought, dare I say it, our war on the back foot. That’s very French! We didn’t anticipate what was going to happen – at least, our leaders didn’t. So the shelters were designed as little more than covered trenches, as if it were a First World War shell that was going to fall. They’d forgotten that since then there’d been an evolution, and not in a good way – in fact, quite the contrary.

As he discussed the availability of bomb shelters in Boulogne-Billancourt, Robert Belleuvre projected pre-war preparations forward in time to his own central and traumatic experience in March 1942: Robert survived in a cellar under a building, but some of his friends were killed in another that collapsed. Robert’s narrative spins around its conditionals:  the would-haves and could-haves indicate the possibility of death shared by all those who hurried down to the cellars. Clearly demonstrating v 67 v

Expecting bombing the multichronic nature of remembering and telling, Robert’s reflections about 1940 are tied into his adult self ’s broader critique of lax French preparedness as part and parcel of the 1940 debacle of defeat. As Knapp and Baldoli note, however, French preparations were ‘scarcely worse’ than British ones (the Italians trailed further behind). Successive French governments had discussed and legislated for the protection of the civilian population throughout the interwar years, with a marked increase in spending and activity in 1939.1 Perhaps the quantity of legislation made measures hard to implement, perhaps war felt distant, or perhaps the pacifist and/or democratic spirit baulked at public mobilisation for war. The fact remains that French civil defence measures were far from complete when war broke out. In all countries, civil defence required the contribution of private individuals to collective – local and ultimately national – security; in France it was tied to ‘a tradition that included national defence as part of every citizen’s responsibility’ going back to the levée en masse.2 As Grayzel and Noakes have demonstrated, civil defence extended the category of active citizenship beyond the men called upon to go and fight. Women were deeply implicated, but so were children, in what they describe as ‘a genuinely new understanding of warfare and of those who could be called upon to sacrifice for the nation’, which derived from the new airborne threat.3 Civil defence activity was planned centrally and then extended through local government, to departmental and municipal levels. Families were expected to alter their behaviour in light of the expected threat, first in the hope of preventing bombs falling on residential areas and second to protect themselves from those that did fall. Inside this ‘domestication of the air raid’, children were required to participate in the preparations for aerial attack, but how did this affect their understanding of the nature of the threat?4

National preparations The Défense Passive was the body responsible for organising civil defence, including provision and dissemination of equipment, exercises and simulations, propaganda and training. In February 1931, the General Inspectorate of Air Defences was created, and an Inspector-General appointed: Marshal Philippe Pétain.5 In November 1931 Prime Minister Pierre Laval issued the Practical Instruction on Passive Defence against Air Attack, a detailed guide requiring prefects and mayors to begin organising civil defence in their localities.6 During 1934, instability in the Rhineland and rumours about the size of the German army v 68 v

Preparing for bombs increased tension in France. Hitler’s announcement of the reintroduction of conscription and the unveiling of the Luftwaffe in March 1935 confirmed growing fears. The second key moment was the passing of the Law Organising Passive Defence on Metropolitan Territory on 8 April 1935 by Pierre-Étienne Flandin. However, the vast majority of legislation appeared during Édouard Daladier’s premiership from April 1938, reflecting his efforts to pull France into war preparedness. Hot on the heels of the Law on the General Organisation of the Nation for Wartime of 11 July 1938, the Decree on the Organisation of Passive Defence of 29 July 1938 was passed, and remained in place into the war.7 It put the protection of civilians ‘at the heart of passive defence’.8 The Défense Passive had a pyramidal structure. From the ministry at the top – responsibility shifted between the Interior and Defence ministries in the 1930s  – through regional (from 1941), departmental and municipal levels down to the chefs d’ilôts (block leaders) who had street-level responsibilities. Each prefect applied civil defence legislation within his department, but the duty of care for civilians rested on mayoral shoulders. Yet the mayor’s role was ill-defined: he was told to ‘lend his support’ to the prefect.9 The Practical Instruction of 1931 established departmental committees but in some areas, planning had started earlier. In June 1929, Brest’s Committee for Défense Passive produced a Defence Plan.10 In the Nord, the Departmental Committee for Défense Passive was set up in 1932 and in early 1933 a census was taken of supposedly bomb-proof cellars in Lille, and training began for municipal staff.11 Boulogne-Billancourt had to wait until 1937 for its cellar census.12 Although French civil defence was comprehensively legislated for by 1939, its very existence posed a number of contradictions. First, it required a personal engagement in the responsibility for collective safety, whereas the well-publicised strength of French army assured people they were defended. Second, preparations faced public criticism. The French had seen the destructive power of bombing since the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and protective measures planned in France appeared inadequate to cope with the scale of the threat.13 Finally, there was a contradiction between the promises of provision, and the quantitative insufficiency of what materialised. Until 1935, the financing of civil defence was in the hands of the municipalities and, as a result, although plans were made, little was done. From 1935, expenses were split between the department and the municipality, but credits were few and slow to arrive. The contradictions thus extended: people were being told to prepare, although they were v 69 v

Expecting bombing unconvinced that they needed to, using equipment that they had no access to and that was potentially useless anyway.

Local and domestic preparations The decree of 6 May 1939 required défense passive to be taught in schools at all levels – too late, of course, for programmes to be established before war broke out.14 Michel Thomas in Boulogne-Billancourt stated that in his home, preparations began ‘only after the declaration of war’. The Belleuvre family, also in Boulogne-Billancourt, began to get ready after the declaration, ‘but beforehand, no!’ Sonia Agache (Hellemmes) said emphatically: ‘We didn’t make any preparations. No, no, no, not at all.’ In Brest, Jean Pochart said that ‘before the war we didn’t do anything’, while Serge Aubrée (Brest) noted that ‘us, in the civilian world, we didn’t fully realise’. Serge’s comment suggests a feeling not unique among the interviewees:  more should have been done. Equipment was also insufficient. Jean Pochart said they had ‘no gas masks, no shelters, nothing’. The contradictions made their mark on family preparedness. It appears that before war broke out, expectation of air raids was low; civilians were unprepared, despite the raft of legislation and publicity about défense passive. However, following the declaration and during the Phoney War, changes encroached upon the domestic world that suggested new dangers from above. War was folded into daily life and began to play an active role for children as they blacked out their homes, learnt about bomb shelters and were issued with gas masks. The population was informed that blacking out windows and shatterproofing them would protect their communities and their homes. If civilians could ‘prevent the planes from spotting their target’, the bombers might not bomb; ‘lights attract bombs’, they were told, ‘just as trees attract lightening’.15 Windows linked safe domestic interiors to the dangerous world of public war, and needed attention during the pre-war period and then after war had broken out. Following a blackout exercise in 1935, the population of Brest came under criticism from the naval authorities for its reluctance to participate.16 By March 1938, willingness had improved, and civilians were praised for their ‘evident good will’.17 An exercise in November 1938 replaced streetlights with ‘blue night lamps’ to simulate wartime lighting.18 Instructions appeared in the local press:  ‘Cover all windows giving onto lighted rooms with perfectly fitted black curtains, full shutters, screens made from cardboard, or asbestos-cement applied to the inside v 70 v

Preparing for bombs of slatted blinds.’19 The naval authorities controlling défense passive preparations in Brest experimented with different types of lighting and attempted to educate the population. Lille also implemented its wartime lighting system before the outbreak of war.20 In Boulogne-Billancourt, the authority for implementing blackout kept shifting. During a conference of suburban mayors in May 1938, Mayor André Morizet learnt that he was to organise teams to extinguish gas lighting by hand, but that electric lighting would be cut at the source (the fact that many localities were in process of transition from gas lighting to electric did not simplify matters).21 A year later, the entire responsibility for blackout measures moved into hands of the Parisian police and not the municipality.22 At the outbreak of war, Brest’s inhabitants were instructed to black out. Lamps in public places were removed until blue bulbs were installed; infringements could incur large fines.23 The mayor received sceptical letters from local people: surely blackout was pointless as the town was impossible to disguise ‘because of the contours of the coast’?24 Meanwhile, the unclear authority for blackout in Boulogne-Billancourt continued to cause problems. By November 1939, responsibility was back in the hands of the mayor; blackout would no longer happen automatically through the electrical companies. It had to be done manually, and the mayor was instructed to establish a ‘control service for public lighting extinguishment’.25 A message from the German authorities complaining about insufficient blackout a year later suggests that it was still not being diligently observed.26 After the declaration of war in Lille, the population was praised for blacking out in ‘a most conscientious fashion’. However, by March 1940, the Défense Passive grumbled that as people no longer believed ‘in the imminence of danger’, blackout was falling short.27 Even during the German invasion, certain households were reported as being ‘negligent and even recalcitrant’.28 Following occupation, the Oberfeldkommandant complained repeatedly about inhabitants’ ‘nonchalant and insufficient’ approach to blackout.29 Brest, therefore, seemed best prepared, while Boulogne-Billancourt’s effort was hampered by administrative wrangles. Some of Lille’s population appear to have been deliberately non-compliant. The picture that emerges from the domestic sphere is rather different. The people I interviewed appear to have seen blackout as an obligation, and several equated the words défense passive solely with blackout. When Christian de la Bachellerie described his father’s work for the Défense Passive, he spoke only of blackout enforcement: ‘He had to go through the streets of Paris to see if everything was properly v 71 v

Expecting bombing camouflaged.’ He added that ‘people obeyed’, partly as the instruction came from uniformed men, partly because it was seen as beneficial. Andréa Cousteaux (Brest) said that these officials had a whistle, and ‘as soon as they saw a sliver of light “Lumière!” they’d shout. You’d get a fine if they saw your light.’ The fear of being fined made children worried enough to obey. Different authorities were remembered as having enforced blackout, however. Andréa said it was the ‘French police’, while for Josette Dutilleul in Hellemmes, ‘the Germans, they’d knock at your door’. Families blacked out their windows differently; some, like the Thomas family (Boulogne-Billancourt), purchasing special blue paint, others finding their own solutions. Andréa’s household used ‘bits of dark blue or black blanket’, while Michel Floch’s family had ‘a big curtain to hide the light as much as possible’. The upstairs windows in Henri Le Turquais’ house were covered ‘with plywood or cardboard’. Madame Th’s parents had shutters downstairs, but upstairs there was ‘blue paper stuck onto the windows’. These families appeared to be fully compliant with the requirements of the Défense Passive, but they had to find the means to do it. This change to daily habits required children’s participation; they had to be careful when turning on lights in order to remain within the law, or break it by being careless. The consequences – that knock on the door – could fall on them as well as their family, and they were anxious to obey. The logic behind blackout was evident. In André Dutilleul’s words, ‘a town with the lights on is a target, but when it’s dark, well, that’s more difficult’. Christian de la Bachellerie understood the collective responsibility, ‘they made us think that we’d attract the bombers’. Blame could thus be levelled at the civilian population, and even young people were aware of it. Blackout was a domestic-level preparation that required community participation to succeed. Equally comprehensible was the shatterproofing of windows: ‘We stuck strips onto the windows to stop them breaking with the vibration,’ said Michel Floch, while also in Brest in Andréa Cousteaux’s house, they used ‘sticky paper, to stop the windows falling in’. Her family stuffed paper in the cracks around the windows so that ‘when it all shook, the windows would stay in place’. But here, the contradictions extended further: while blackout intended to prevent an air raid, shatterproofing assumed it would happen. Blackout measures in the home foretold of the capricious nature of bombing; they held within them the revelation that home was not safe. Like the routine of drawing blackout curtains at night, viewing the world through criss-crossed paper was a daily reminder for children of the risk from the skies. v 72 v

Preparing for bombs If sticky paper on window panes suggested that home was no longer safe, shelters confirmed it. In most cases, shelters were outside the home. This chapter covers pre-war shelter preparations and the situation when war broke out; later evolutions in shelter provision are discussed in Chapter  5. Three main types of shelter were planned, each with its own problems. Domestic cellars could be reinforced with wood or steel, which was fiddly and expensive; deep, concrete shelters could be built, but were hugely expensive; or trenches could be dug, requiring plenty of open space. The latter could be ‘occasional’, limited and cheap, or more permanent structures. In localities designated ‘top priority’, which included Brest and Lille, it was compulsory for the municipality to provide shelter for the entire population that remained after an obligatory evacuation.30 In Brest, as evacuation was envisaged on a large scale, pre-war planning only looked to shelter the essential workers who would remain. But when evacuation became voluntary in Brest in July 1939, problems arose. The town was now wholly deficient in shelters and masks, and few domestic cellars were suitable as shelters.31 Pre-war shelter planning in the suburbs of Paris depended on cellars. The 1937 cellar census had shown that 600,000 cellars in the suburbs could be used, and the Prefect of Police planned to shelter another 1.4 million people across the city in trench shelters.32 It was suggested in spring 1939 that the Metro could also act as a shelter in Boulogne-Billancourt, a measure not authorised, however, until June 1942.33 In March 1939, the mayor of Lille was concerned that ‘shelters that would really withstand a 1000kg bomb are too expensive, and even the sturdiest shelters could collapse when struck repeatedly’.34 During 1939, the municipality received seven million francs to develop its shelters, and had a clearly labelled system: 94,300 people were allocated space in their own cellars, known as ‘family shelters’. Almost 57,000 others were designated places in cellars within 250 metres of their homes, in ‘reception shelters’. There were ‘private shelters’ in workplaces and schools, with space for just over 74,000 people, and thirty-five ‘occasional shelters’ around the town with 14,000 places. On paper, it seemed, more than 150,000 people could be catered for.35 When war broke out, a local engineer criticised Brest’s shelters, which, he said, ‘are shelters in name alone’.36 Throughout 1940, Brest was wholly deficient in suitable places to take cover. By the beginning of 1941, there were 1,680 metres of ‘occasional shelters’ (sufficient for 6,000 people) and 250 metres of permanent trench-shelters for 800 people.37 However, the near-uselessness of trenches and cellars against the Allied bombs led v 73 v

Expecting bombing the mayor to begin his quest for the construction of purpose-built, deep, concrete bomb shelters, discussed in Chapter  5.38 In November 1939, Boulogne-Billancourt also found itself with a shelter crisis. Only 60 per cent of the population had an allocated shelter (mostly in unstrutted domestic cellars) and sufficient trenches had not materialised.39 Residents were told to dig their own trenches ‘while waiting for the departmental system of trenches to be built’.40 Two months later, a municipal Défense Passive report criticised the departmental cellar census and the attribution of safety to cellars among which ‘very few […] inspire much confidence’. It was reported that, contrary to departmental estimates, only about 24,000 people could be sheltered in cellars, and that trenches were dangerous because of the alluvial soil.41 At the end of May 1940, the Défense Passive service there wrote that ‘the situation […] is still the same as in November 1939’, when the shelter shortage was first noticed.42 Shelter space in Lille had also been illusory; in June 1940, it was reported that there were only places for 22,300 civilians.43 After war was declared, a barrage of complaints to the mayor demanded the unlocking of nearby cellars, requested that cellars be checked and pleaded for school basements to be reinforced.44 Over time, new difficulties appeared in Lille, as the occupiers demanded high-quality shelters for their sole use and the hastily constructed shelters from 1939 developed a poisonous fungus.45 Bomb shelters in all three towns were inadequate and insufficient, particularly as the weight of bombs was far greater than had been envisaged. This inadequacy is reflected through the oral narratives. Several people had clear memories of the signs indicating designated shelters. Claude Thomas (Boulogne-Billancourt) described ‘posters stuck on apartment blocks that showed each cellar’s capacity’. Sometimes the designated shelter was distant. For Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt), whose polio had left her with difficulties walking, this was ‘a good five minutes on foot from our house’, and impossible to reach rapidly. Christian de la Bachellerie remembered spotting zig-zag trenches in a nearby public park. What did these observations reveal? By implication, that one had to run the gauntlet of falling projectiles in order to reach safety; that one could be ‘caught out’ and need an ‘occasional trench’; and perhaps, just perhaps, there might not be enough space in the shelter as capacity was evidently limited. Each piece of evidence layered nuances onto children’s understanding of the threat. Yet again a contradiction arose. Designated cellars were supposed to be safe, and children were aware of the work being done to secure them. Josette Dutilleul in Hellemmes remembered ‘that they were shoring up v 74 v

Preparing for bombs the cellars with wooden beams, and strutting them inside’. But were they safe? Other construction activity – knocking through holes between cellars – suggested otherwise. Josette knew what this was for: ‘if we couldn’t get out through our house, we might be able to go through the neighbours’ houses’. But of course this indicated the possibility that the house above could collapse, and introduced the idea of being trapped. Nonetheless, the interconnecting cellars were a place of sociability and fun. Bernard Lemaire (Lille) said that ‘we used to pop in and out to see the neighbours, us kids’. This playful memory suggests that other children remained happily ignorant of the sinister rationale for the escape routes. Concerns over shelters and cellars were prevalent in BoulogneBillancourt and Lille but not in Brest where there were no official shelters beyond the town centre and the arsenal. In Saint Martin, Andréa Cousteaux said ‘we’d shelter under the church’. There they felt safe, even after Allied bombing began, as they believed their church was a useful landmark that the bombers would not destroy – showing a common but misplaced faith in the bombers’ aim and accuracy. Jean Pochart’s father built on their farm ‘a well-covered trench under a haystack’. In Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, the Le Turquais family doubted the safety of their cellar, so constructed a shelter between two embankments ‘with a straw stack on top. We’d leave the house holding boards over our heads to run to shelter outside’. Families improvised, as with the blackout, developing their own concepts of safety and danger. Bomb shelters took different forms, were situated in many places, offered greater or lesser protection, and were ‘official’ or homespun. They provided observant children with certain information about what air raids might be like before bombs began to fall. Shelters were further evidence of the danger that could arrive from the air, and another proof, like shatterproofing windows, that the home was not safe. Of course many children, particularly younger ones, could not make direct links between what they saw and what it suggested, which required a capacity for abstract thought and precise knowledge. Yet to be safe, children knew that they could not stay at home; they had to learn to move to safety, and the qualities that made something safe gave clues as to the nature of the threat. Bombs could hit the home or bombs could hit the streets, but gas was all-pervasive. Safety had to be carried in a tube or a box hanging over the shoulder. The gas mask was the most potent symbol of the apocalyptic potential of poison gas. A  1934 brochure told readers that ‘it is down to the population to provide themselves with masks’.46 From 1934, v 75 v

Expecting bombing sessions were organised in Lille to train ‘civilian instructors capable of directing the fight against gas and teaching local people how to use protective equipment’.47 In Brest, municipal staff received gas training from 1934. Brest’s Défense Passive organised gas exercises during March and June in 1938, which were not taken very seriously by onlookers.48 By 1938, national planners decided that masks would be given to everyone, but provision faltered. There were too many designs and companies, and too few masks made. In May 1938, a ‘national’ mask was decided upon, although it would not go into manufacture for another three months; four million would be provided, and in the meantime one million canvas masks were available.49 While pre-war distribution details are not available for Brest or for Lille, prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, some masks had been given out in Boulogne-Billancourt. In December 1938, inhabitants were told that they would all receive one; 14,000 had already been distributed, although there were none for children.50 By May 1939, 26,728 masks had been provided, and there were around 8,000 still in storage.51 In his critique of défense passive preparations in the Nord, the mayor of Lille stated that ‘those we are able to shelter should also be given a mask’, indicating that in March 1939, they had not yet been.52 In September 1939, then, masks had not been widely distributed in France. In Brest at the local level plans were in disarray. ‘What can local people do? […] They haven’t got gas masks and they look enviously at the British soldiers who do,’ criticised one man.53 Much remained to be done. In August, the president of the town’s Défense Passive Committee complained to the Prefect of Finistère that no lime chloride for disinfection had been delivered, and that while he had requested 40,000 masks for the population, only 27,440 could be provided, and only 18,850 had arrived by June 1940. Of these, more than a third were sent to other towns in Finistère. Furthermore, the Sports Office, where most masks were being stored, had been requisitioned by the Germans, leaving only 3,750 available for distribution.54 Only in summer 1941 were masks were supplied widely in Brest.55 In Boulogne-Billancourt, the municipality was able to distribute masks earlier, some during October 1939, including a small number for children.56 More were provided in spring 1940, but by then children’s masks were lacking.57 So while the flow of masks into the Parisian suburbs was better, there were insufficient masks in smaller sizes. The gas mask symbolised the horrors of modern war; but, as the previous chapter suggested, this imagined future war was absent from children’s minds. What did the gas mask mean to children, and how did it develop their expectations? Masks were distributed at various points. v 76 v

Preparing for bombs André Dutilleul in Lille got his mask ‘at the start of the war’; likewise Édith Denhez in Cambrai. Robert Belleuvre from Boulogne-Billancourt said that ‘everyone’ received a mask after the declaration of war; however, Madame Th, also from Boulogne-Billancourt, received hers ‘after the exode’ of May–June 1940. Many remembered trying their mask on; often, this was the only time they wore it. Parents were anxious about the poor provision of masks. In Boulogne-Billancourt where small masks were lacking, Christian Solet’s mother was outraged, demanding of a municipal employee, ‘So I’m going to put my mask on and let my son die next to me?’ Michèle Martin’s mother acted decisively to assure her youngest daughter had a mask. Her victory over the authorities was retold by Michèle: ‘We went to Paris, to the Préfecture de Police, to get me a mask. And after that, I had my little gas mask. My mother fought for me to have one!’ In Hellemmes, Sonia Agache’s mother found another solution, making for her youngest children ‘a sort of mask from some gauze and some cotton wool’. Masks were not short for everyone, however. Max Potter in Paris found himself in an unusual position: ‘I had two! I had a French one […] and the British Embassy – as I had a British father, I had dual nationality, two passports – the British also gave me a mask!’ Max was proud of his two masks and he showed them off at school. But typically, children disliked their masks. Ironically, with the mask on, ‘you couldn’t breathe properly’, said Andréa Cousteaux from Brest. When Madame Th put her mask on, ‘Oh, it was awful! […] I was suffocating in there!’ The smell of the mask was repugnant, she added, ‘it was like rubber, but worse’, and it was uncomfortable. Andréa described it: ‘Mon Dieu, it was rubbery and stuck to your skin, and oh, it was horrible, you sweated! Oh horrible.’ She continued, saying it obscured her other senses: ‘I couldn’t see more than two metres in front of me.’ The mask itself was more unpleasant than any vaguely formed idea of gas. For some, it was positively frightening. In Boulogne-Billancourt, Michel Thomas said that the mask was ‘terrible  – it frightened me’ giving its wearer ‘a monster’s head!’ Only these few described wearing their mask, but more recalled the ‘sort of tube’ (Christian de la Bachellerie), the ‘long tube’ (Claude Thomas), the ‘big grey tube’ (Michèle Martin), the ‘round box, like a tube’ (Bernard Lemaire) in which the mask was kept. This perhaps indicates the mask’s place in their daily life. It was a tubular encumbrance rather than a harbinger of poison gas. The mask’s passive role is also suggested by descriptions of what they did with their masks. ‘We took the mask to school with us,’ said Robert Belleuvre. ‘We took it to v 77 v

Expecting bombing school,’ Max Potter reiterated. ‘You had to take it,’ said Madame Th, and Michèle Martin remembered ‘you walked around with it.’ Other than that, the masks had little purpose in children’s lives. Gas, it seems, was not high on their children’s list of concerns. Max Potter remarked ‘I wasn’t particularly scared of it’, and Madame Th said, when asked if she feared gas:  ‘I can’t remember being scared […]. We never spoke of it.’ For Max, concern over gas disappeared after the defeat. He carried his masks ‘only until the occupation. After that, they seemed pointless.’ Only the Germans would have used gas, he thought. Some interviewees attributed a fear of gas to memories of the First World War. For example, Robert Belleuvre (Boulogne-Billancourt) said that ‘we knew there’d been gas during 1914–18, so you always feared it might happen again’. Sonia Agache remarked that ‘my father had been gassed during the 1914–18 war, so it’s true, there was a fear’. But none of the interviewees highlighted his or her own anxiety. The fear was generalised, belonging to the adult world, which accounts for parents’ concerns over insufficient masks. The distinction between adult and child knowledge is illustrated in an exchange with Michel and Claude Thomas: Michel: We believed [that gas might be used] because they’d used it at the front in 1914–18. Lindsey: But you, when you were a child, did you think about gas? Michel: Me, no, I admit I didn’t really realise – did you? Claude: No, no. It was just that we had that thing, the mask.

This partly illustrates the difficulty of translating the French pronoun on: we, you, they or one? Personal or impersonal? Here Michel initially used it impersonally to describe a mood he ascribed to the adult world, so I  questioned further to get at his own recollections. Christian de la Bachellerie, a teenager in Boulogne-Billancourt at the outbreak of war, seemed more aware of his mask’s purpose. He said he was afraid of gas ‘because we had masks’. The mask created a fear, based on understandings of the past: ‘They’d used gas in 1914–18 – why couldn’t it happen again? We didn’t know! When we went out with our masks, it was because it was compulsory but also for safety’s sake.’ The obligation to carry the mask brought gas attack into the realm of possibility. This was also the case with Christian Solet, whose parents were afraid of poison gas ‘because the Défense Passive had distributed gas masks’:  distribution created expectation. However, knowledge from the past could also dampen fear. The Great War’s blood-soaked battlefields were on France’s north-eastern border; in Brest in 1940, this mattered. The lively sea winds created a v 78 v

Preparing for bombs far different environment to the confinement of trenches in flat Flanders countryside, where gas lingered. Andréa Cousteaux’s father scorned his gas mask, an attitude transmitted to his daughter: ‘My father said “Allez hop!” [She mimed throwing the mask away.] He’d been in the 1914 war, and we didn’t need that! Here in Brest there’s the air, the sea! We couldn’t be poisoned!’ The impact of the First World War on the expectation of gas attack was significant, but variable. Overall, however, it seemed that, like those apocalyptic visions that spawned it, fear of gas belonged in the adult world, not that of children. Few preparations for war in the domestic sphere, it seems, took place before the outbreak of war. While children may not have been able to articulate the threat of war, certain preparations made those old enough to notice them aware of potential dangers to personal and community safety and security. It is clear that in some cases they did not comprehend what they were being told to do. For example, the gas mask was simply carried; its purpose remained vague. While children participated actively in making sure their homes were blacked out, they did this more through fear of authority ­figures – a ticking off from parents or even a fine from police – than with a full grasp of the bombing threat grounded in independent decision-making. Expectations were nonetheless heightened because knowledge had increased, and in particular, the home was under threat. Yet children themselves did not expect to be bombed  – increased knowledge did not lead to a greater sense of personal danger. The exception was Christian de la Bachellerie in Boulogne-Billancourt, one of the eldest of the interviewees, who linked preparation directly to fear of bombing: ‘Because we were told to fit out our houses with shelters, we assumed we could be bombed. We expected it.’ None of the other interviewees made a causal link between preparations and anxiety about bombing; without the reality of the event itself, the preparations lacked coherence as an ensemble. Across the past two chapters, I have suggested that expectations of war and bombing among children depended on a range of factors, from family situation to gender, from age to location. Links across these factors are also clear; for example, family experiences of war were regionally shaped, and so different understandings were transmitted between generations. Only the older interviewees had reasonably clear memories of events before the war. Boys appeared to have been more aware of current affairs – or perhaps women were more willing to admit not having been interested. Yvette Chapalain (Brest) and Madame Th (Boulogne-Billancourt) denied having known much about the public world of war. Some boys, v 79 v

Expecting bombing particularly the Thomas brothers (Boulogne-Billancourt) and Jean Caniot (Lille), claimed a keen interest in current affairs, while others like Michel Floch (Brest) and Henri Girardon (Brest) were excited by military events. However, an interest in the world outside home was not the norm. Hindsight recalls this as the calm before the storm, Cécile Bramé emphasising, ‘Listen, I  was ten years old, life was great!’ Bombing was one of several wartime events that could create a rupture, in memory, with past innocence. But until it happened, there was little expectation. Indeed, even though many interviewees had participated in the civilian exodus of summer 1940 (even in Brest civilians fled to the countryside), and had been strafed by Stukas, this initial air attack was retrospectively distanced from the Allied air raids. It heightened awareness of potential danger from above, but, as Madame Th declared, ‘it wasn’t bombing’. Children did not expect to be bombed, despite talk of the air threat in the adult world. They anchored cause and effect to present, known points, rather than abstract futures. Yet anxieties were there, and expectation existed, but both were shaped by the experience of being a child. First, while children may glean or overhear information about the world, they cannot always comprehend its import. For example, in Paris, Max Potter, with some vocabulary from his English father, demonstrated the chasm between information and interpretation:  ‘I heard them talk about the couloir de dancing’, he said: the pretext for war, the couloir de Danzig – the Danzig corridor – was misheard and quite baffling. Lacking vital blocks of knowledge, the outside world was interpreted only partially, and expectation could not fully emerge from partial knowledge. Second, the child’s world was insular. While information penetrated the domestic sphere, children were still largely protected by the wall of private life. To expect a threat from outside, children needed to face outwards, yet as Yves Le Roy (Brest) said, ‘we lived in the family cocoon’. However, familiar routines were affected by national and local preparations for bombing, with which children had to engage by drawing curtains and switching off lights, learning where shelters were and carrying masks. Even passive participation could lead to an incremental acquisition of knowledge that had a cognitive impact, and thus created emotional responses, sometimes anxiety, sometimes excitement, sometimes confusion. Some children actively engaged with the world outside, by seeking information, or participating in the collective activities that orientated the community and nation towards war. But children found it hard to imagine the future, so much so that when war broke out in 1939, despite the signs, it was still surprising: ‘we v 80 v

Preparing for bombs went to war like that, suddenly – from one day to the next’, said Serge Aubrée in Brest. Everything changed as bombs smashed through the roof, entering the home directly. Children exist in the public sphere as the objects of education policy, or of propaganda; in their subjective state they belong to the private sphere. Bombing blurred the boundary between public and private, involving children in war on an unprecedented scale.

Notes 1 See Chapter 3 of Baldoli and Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, for a further discussion of pre-war preparations. 2 Baldoli and Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, p. 74. 3 S. R. Grayzel and L. Noakes, ‘Defending the home(land): gendering civil defence from the First World War to the “War on Terror” ’, in A. Carden-Coyne (ed.), Gender and Conflict since 1914: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 57. 4 S. R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012). 5 AMCB, 4H4.5: Decree of 9 February 1931, quoted in Procivil 1.1, p. 7. 6 AMBB, 6H3: Instruction pratique sur la défense passive contre les attaques aériennes, 23 November 1931. 7 Décret sur l’organisation de la Défense passive, 29 July 1938 (JO, 30 July 1938). 8 Baldoli and Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes, p. 52. 9 A. Hardy, ‘La Défense passive à Rouen et dans son agglomération’ (unpublished Masters dissertation, Université de Rouen, 2005–6), p. 25. 10 AMCB, 4H4.14:  Sub-Prefect of Brest to Prefect of Finistère, 29 March 1929; AMCB, 4H4.14:  ‘Établissement du plan de protection’, Défense Passive Division, Brest Town Hall, September 1939. 11 ADN, 25W.38134:  Departmental Committee for Défense Passive, meetings 9 July 1932 and 28 December 1933, undated. 12 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Rapport du service locale de défense passive au sujet de l’état de protection de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 15 November 1939. 13 See, for example, AMBB, 6H3, Je sais tout (April 1934), ‘Alerte aux gaz! Nous ne sommes pas prêts’ or AMBB, 6H6, Le cri de France (9 March 1939), which exposed the gas mask ‘scandal’: the models available would cause ‘a slow and painful death’. 14 Decree of 6 May 1939, ‘Obligation de l’enseignement de la défense passive’ (JO, 7 May 1939).

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Expecting bombing 15 AMCB, 4H4.14, La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 27 October 1938; AML, 5H3.1: 10 Causeries radiodiffusées sur la protection familiale contre les bombardements et le souffle, given by Commandant Charles Gibrin (Limoges and Nancy: Charles Lavauzelle et Cie, 1943), p. 8. 16 AMCB, 4H4.14, Chief Police Superintendent of Brest to Mayor of Brest, 17 April 1935. 17 AMCB, 4H4.14, La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 18 March 1939. 18 AMCB, 4H4.14: Mayor of Brest to Mayor of Lorient, 1 February 1939. 19 AMCB, 4H4.14, La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 27 October 1938. 20 AML, 5H3.2: Mayor of Lille, Conference of socialist deputies of the Nord, ‘Rapport sur la défense passive’, 19 March 1939. 21 AMBB, 6H4: Conférence faite aux maires de la banlieue par le secrétaire général de la Défense Passive, 10 May 1938. 22 AMBB, 6H7: Bulletin municipal officiel, no. 25, April–May 1939. 23 AMCB, 4H4.14:  La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 4 September 1939, 5 September 1939. 24 AMCB, 4H4.14: Mr Caradec to Mayor of Brest, 30 September 1939. 25 AMBB, 6H6: Prefect of the Seine to Mayors of the Seine, 22 November 1939. 26 AMBB, 6H4: Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to headteachers, concierges of public meeting spaces and communal buildings, 22 November 1940. 27 ADN, 25W.38134:  Chief Police Superintendent of Lille to Prefect of the Nord, 28 March 1940. 28 ADN, 25W.38134:  Police Superintendent of Lille to Chief Police Superintendent of Lille, 15 May 1940. 29 AML, 5H3.4: Stadtkommissar of Lille to Mayor of Lille, 28 October 1940. 30 AML, 5H3.3: ‘Notice provisoire relative à la mise à l’abri de la population maintenue dans les localités classées de première urgence’ (Ministry of National Defence and War, Défense Passive division), 24 December 1938. 31 AMCB, 4H4.14: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 2 October 1939; Brest Town Hall, Défense Passive Division, ‘Établissement du plan de protection de la population’, 29 September 1939. 32 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Conférence faite aux maires de la banlieue par le secrétaire général de la Défense Passive’, 10 May 1938. 33 AMBB, 6H7: Mayor of Brest to Prefect of the Seine, petition for Billancourt Metro station to be opened during air raids, 15 April 1942; poster signed by Mayor Robert Colmar to the population of Boulogne-Billancourt authorising the use of nearby section of Metro during air raids, 5 June 1942. 34 AML, 5H3.2: Mayor of Lille, Conference of socialist deputies of the Nord, ‘Rapport sur la défense passive’, 19 March 1939. 35 AML, 5H3.3: Organisation of Défense Passive, Lille Town Hall, ‘Exposé au 15 nov. 1939’, 15 November 1939. 36 AMCB, 4H4.21: Launé (Department of Public Engineering) to Mayor of Brest, 23 November 1939.

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Preparing for bombs 37 AMCB, 4H4.14: President of the Urban Committee for Défense Passive, ‘Modèle no. 1: Commune de Brest’, 28 April 1941. 38 AMCB, 4H4.14: Mayor of Brest to Mayor of Lorient, 1 August 1941. 39 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Rapport du service locale de défense passive au sujet de l’état de protection de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 15 November 1939. 40 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Compte rendu de la conférence faite à la Préfecture de Police (Défense Passive) aux Maires de la Banlieue’, 12 September 1939. 41 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Rapport du service locale de défense passive au sujet de l’état de protection de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 15 November 1939. 42 AMBB, 6H7: Défense Passive Division, Boulogne-Billancourt Town Hall, ‘Note pour Monsieur Morizet’, 31 May 1940. 43 AML, 5H3.3, ‘Rapport’, Défense Passive Division, Lille Town Hall, 28 June 1940. 44 For example, AML, 5H3.36:  Letter from nine families in the rue de l’Alma to Mayor of Lille, 6 September 1939; Mr Guillaume to Mayor of Lille, 8 September 1939; Mr Van den Bussche to Mayor of Lille, 12 September 1939. 45 AML, 5H3.36: Mayor of Lille to Prefect of the Nord, 5 November 1943. 46 AML, 5H3.1: Lille et le Nord sous les Gaz (1934), p. 2. 47 ADN, 25W.38056: Prefect of the Nord to Mayors of Lille and its communes, 15 March 1934. 48 AMCB, 4H4.15: Prefect of Finistère to Mayor of Brest, 14 February 1934; 4H4.14: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 5 March 1938; La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 1 July 1938. 49 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Conférence faite aux maires de la banlieue par le secrétaire général de la Défense Passive’, 10 May 1938. 50 AMBB, 6H4: Bulletin municipal officiel, no. 24, December 1938. 51 AMBB, 6H6:  ‘Distribution des masques de protection contre les gaz’, Deputy Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, 1 June 1939. 52 AML, 5H3.2: Mayor of Lille, Conference of socialist deputies of the Nord, ‘Rapport sur la défense passive’, 19 March 1939. 53 AMCB, 4H4.14: Mr Caradec to Mayor of Brest, 30 September 1939. 54 AMCB, 4H4.15:  President of Urban Committee for Défense Passive to Prefect of Finistère, 10 August 1940. 55 AMCB, 4H4.15: Press release, Mayor of Brest to population, ‘Distribution des masques à gaz’, 1 July 1941. 56 AMBB, 6H7:  Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to population, ‘Distribution de masques de protection contre les gaz pour les enfants’, 4 October 1939. 57 AMBB, 6H6:  Deputy Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to headteachers, 14 March 1940; Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to population, poster ‘Distribution des masques de protection contre les gaz de combat’, 15 April 1940.

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Part II

Experiencing bombing

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Being bombed

Pierre Haigneré: We were asleep. Everyone was asleep. And my father was there. He was a railway worker, and that night he wasn’t on duty – luckily for us, I think. So he heard, I don’t know if it was the sirens, but certainly the flares which woke everyone up, and the first shells of the anti-aircraft fire before the raid. So we all ran downstairs, and as there was no cellar – the only shelter that there was (it seems it was already in everyone’s minds as practically everyone did the same thing) was to get under the staircase. [There was] a little cupboard, very small, but we were all in there. The memory I have is of being squashed in there, with my brothers and my mother, and my father who – there wasn’t enough space for him, so he was a bit further away, and everyone lying on the ground. Then it started, and it lasted an eternity. It lasted (so I found out later) 45 minutes, in two waves. But, well, you can’t imagine – how can I put it? – the terror, you know. But for us, there, the memory that I have, it’s with each – there was – a cluster of bombs which fell, and as they fell they made a terrible noise […] and after two or three times, we knew what was going to happen after the screeching noise: the bomb crashed down and the house lifted up. I could show you on a map, all the impacts of the bombs were plotted, and miraculously our house was in the middle. Only two houses were spared; all the rest were destroyed. So once the storm passed over, if I can put it like that, we could breathe a little, but then the screeching began again, and we knew that something terrible was going to happen because the windows smashed into pieces, all the furniture crashed over […]. It was the apocalypse for a child – no, I don’t know anymore – I think I was told off because my teeth were chattering, because I said ‘I’m scared’, and then [stops, distressed] […]. You had the feeling that the world was collapsing, you said to yourself ‘It’s the end. We’re going to be killed’. I don’t know how I could have thought that at the time, but you didn’t feel you could escape it.

In the railway workers’ garden city housing estate of La Délivrance in Lomme, situated just off the Dunkirk road, the raid of 10 April 1944 was v 87 v

Experiencing bombing devastating. Pierre Haigneré was eight years old at the time of his family’s escape, in a raid so heavy that 500 of his neighbours lost their lives, as did another 500 local people. His distress goes some way towards answering one of the questions at the heart of any enquiry into the past: what was it like? This chapter uses the oral narratives to explore the way in which being bombed was experienced in different locations and by different children. As he told his story, Pierre oscillated between describing what happened and analysing it. The analysis is important – part of the ‘everyday theorising’ we all do about our lives – and gives us deeper insight into the impression this air raid made on him. That intensity of terror, coupled with the event’s ability still to shake Pierre’s composure is an indication of the presence of trauma.

Surprise, shelter, survival: practical responses to bombing None of the preparations made by the military, local and national government and ordinary citizens had really prepared them for the bombs that fell. People were genuinely surprised when the bombs first rained down, especially if, as in Boulogne-Billancourt on 3 March 1942, there had been no warning. Claude Thomas indignantly remarked that ‘the air raid sirens hadn’t sounded’. Phosphorescent marking devices alerted Christian Solet’s family, among others. Christian said that ‘as there’d been no warning, everyone was just staring out of the window. We were watching what was going on.’ With no official warning, many remained above ground, observing events with curiosity. Pre-war exposure to the possibility of bombing had not removed the surprise of its reality. Christian Solet said ‘we really didn’t know at all about all of that’, and Josette Dutilleul (Hellemmes) remarked ‘it was completely unexpected’. For Henri Girardon (Brest), ‘we never thought it could happen to us’, and Michel Jean-Bart (Lomme) said that no one had believed ‘that it could happen to their own home’. In some cases, long immunity from bombing gave rise to complacency. Édith Denhez in Cambrai during 1944, where planes had flown past so many times, remarked that ‘we didn’t believe in bombing anymore’. Max Potter in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris agreed: ‘We didn’t think it could be for us, we didn’t believe it at all. We thought it was for Gennevilliers or the petrol reserves.’ People prayed for the bombers to drop their cargoes elsewhere. The preparations had suggested that it could happen, but no one believed that it would. The siren was not necessarily what triggered action at the domestic level. Parents, recognising imminent danger in a way that their children v 88 v

Being bombed could not, gave ‘unofficial’ warnings – although they were not necessarily reliable. In Hellemmes, Josette Dutilleul’s father’s warning came a fraction too late: ‘My father shouted “Quick, quick, quick, everyone in the cellar!” We didn’t even have time to get down there before the bombs came falling down.’ Thus parents were a vital part of the urgent scramble away from the bombs, shepherding and directing their children. Younger children were passively dependent on the adults around them: ‘we followed blindly, like lemmings’, Thérèse Leclercq (Hellemmes) said. In Boulogne-Billancourt, Michèle Martin struggled with her disability:  ‘I tried to run, but couldn’t. My father carried me on his shoulders.’ Pierre Haigneré’s family sheltered under the stairs, but his parents offered their sons a more intimate form of protection:  ‘My mother and father tried to make a shield with their bodies to protect us.’ It was not uncommon for families killed together to be found like this. Sometimes, then, children received special attention; at other times, they seemed caught up in a tumbling whirl of activity:  ‘Everyone went down to the cellar,’ Madame Th (Boulogne-Billancourt) said. ‘I went down with my parents, my grandmother was with us, we went down, we got dressed quickly, quickly, quickly, on the double.’ Madame Th remembered her actions as being tied into the family’s activity. In fear of being buried alive, Max Potter’s mother ‘never wanted to go down to the cellar’ so as bombs fell outside, Max remained above ground. The Chapalain family in Brest did not take shelter either, at home or locally. Yvette said, ‘my father would lead us out into the garden’, as he felt that the Germans’ artificial fog, seeping into the house, made the air inside noxious. In the fresh air, one could breathe, ‘although’, Yvette recognised, ‘it was dangerous because the shells that exploded, fragments would fall around us’. Clearly a great deal of children’s activity was guided by parents’ decision-making rather than official systems of protection. Parents also provided emotional reassurance. Thérèse Leclercq remarked upon her mother’s calming influence during air raids, putting it down partly to character, partly to faith:  ‘My mum was pretty strong really. I don’t recall her feeling sorry for herself. She always said to us: “It will be fine […]. Say your prayers and the good Lord will protect you.” ’ But mothers could also contribute to anxiety. Also in Hellemmes, Marie-Thérèse Termote’s mother was unafraid and curious; during a raid ‘she stayed at the window. Well, she wanted to watch what was going on. But that made me even more scared.’ Other mothers struggled to contain their own fear, and so could not comfort their children. Andréa Cousteaux said that while others in her shelter in Brest tried to reassure v 89 v

Experiencing bombing each other, her mother’s terror had the opposite effect: ‘My mother, she was panicky. She’d say: “That’s it, that one! It’s for us, that one, it’s for us!” ’ Overcome by her fear, she was unable to provide Andréa with reassurance. These issues were reflected by contemporary paediatricians Marie Helen Mercier and J. Louise Despert, who reported in 1943 that the ‘emotional instability’ of parents was a contributing factor in the war-related traumatisation of children, while those parents who could ‘remain outwardly calm’ were able to alleviate their children’s anxieties.1 Sometimes children were at home on their own when bombed, or without one parent, adding an extra layer to the fear already created by the bombs themselves. Cécile Bramé in Brest described how a family united could alleviate anxiety: ‘You felt that if you had your parents at your side, you were safe […] I said to myself, we’re all together, we’ll be fine.’ But when her father was at work, ‘your thoughts always go out to the person who’s not there’. As teenager Bernard Bauwens sheltered in a sturdy cellar under an apartment block in Boulogne-Billancourt, he thought of his mother working late at the Renault factory. Having lost his father, he faced a second bereavement: ‘I said to myself, “she’s going to be killed”.’ Younger children, less capable of imagining a range of scenarios, did not always seem preoccupied with parents’ safety, and in the narratives were focused on themselves. Édith Denhez and her sister Claire had been left alone; she does not recall fearing for her mother, but simply being frightened. The sisters tried to follow the instructions they had been given: ‘We heard the planes diving, and whistling, whistling, so we ran to our neighbour’s house […]. But that neighbour wasn’t at home! We were screaming out in the street, distraught.’ Two little girls, incapable of finding their own way to safety, they were scooped up and hurried to shelter by a different neighbour. Ignorance protected children from frightening knowledge, but it also endangered them as they had not the experience to know how to act. At night, people were normally at home and a routine could be established. But daytime bombing was more capricious. Perhaps children were at school, perhaps out and about. When bombs fell on Boulogne-Billancourt on 4 April 1943, Michèle Martin was momentarily separated from her parents; she and her sister had to improvise. Notably, in her narrative it is precisely at the moment of separation that she realised with horror what bombs could do: ‘We hid under a chestnut tree – a great choice against bombs! Well, it was then, then that we saw the bombs, we saw things happen, people flipped up into the air.’ Michèle and her sister had to act independently of their parents in order to protect v 90 v

Being bombed themselves; they did so, but their choice of shelter reflected their lack of understanding of the threat. Cécile Bramé also described a moment imprinted on her memory, when she was caught out by the first daylight bombing of Brest on 24 July 1941. In the heat of the alert: ‘We were on the ramparts, here and there. And then, I couldn’t find my mother. Oh, I was frantic.’ Cécile was only separated for a moment – like Michèle – but that moment fixed the panic in her memory, and make it (rather than bombs) the centre of the anecdote. Parents were not, however, the only source of reassurance and protection. The boys at the Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon patronage (a church-run youth club) were at the beach on 24 July 1941. As the bombs fell, Henri Le Turquais said ‘we huddled up close together’. For Yves Le Roy, Henri’s friend, fear dominated, although ‘perhaps less so than if we’d each been on our own’. The children took reassurance from each other. Henri remarked that ‘in a group, you put on a brave face, to show your mates’. Pretending partially replaced the reality of fear. Thus the more frightening effects of bombing were tempered by social context. While individuals experienced and remembered events differently  – like Henri’s bravado contrasted with Yves’ fear – bombing, it seems, was very much a shared experience as individuals actively sought out other people to protect and reassure them. Bombing is a shared experience, but the sharing is intimate. It is for this reason, perhaps, that its memory does not inhabit a collective space, but sits in the less-explored territory of local and group memories. On some occasions, children took responsibility for themselves, clearly demonstrating an ability to make independent decisions based on knowledge. Of course, age is important here. At twelve years old, at the upper end of middle childhood, Serge Aubrée in Brest used his judgement to make an important choice: ‘I wanted to shelter in a porch that I knew about, but they shut the door in my face. I said, “Can’t I come in? Can’t I come in?” I had to think to myself – well, people often said the shelter nearby was great because it was vaulted. So I went off to that shelter to wait it out.’ Serge made a good decision. Bombs fell all around, and luck, appearing not for the last time in this book, validated his decision: the first place he had tried was struck and not all inside survived. André Dutilleul, at a similar age, was walking to his patronage in Hellemmes when the siren sounded: I ran to find a shelter, towards home. The huge factory was on the way, so I said to myself, “I’ll have a better shelter at the factory than if I carry on.”

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Experiencing bombing I turned right and went down rue de l’Église, the bombs fell right at that moment! All the glass in the windows flew out. I was just going down the steps. And the bomb fell right opposite!

André knew that the factory had a strong, reinforced shelter where he could go. Like Serge, he moved around the town unaccompanied, and had enough local knowledge to make decisions. Yet bombs were capricious, and survival relied as much on luck as on judgement, as we shall see. In both of these stories, decision-making – personal agency – takes centre stage:  the men see their boy selves’ survival as dependent on a good choice that they made.

Son et lumière: sensory responses to bombing Being bombed was an intensely sensory experience. Our senses are the means by which we learn about the world; so how did children interpret what they saw, heard and smelled during an air raid? ‘At first’, said Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt), an air raid was ‘like a show’. Awestruck, people were glued to their windows, watching phosphorescent markers fall to illuminate nearby targets. Christian de la Bachellerie described this opening act: ‘We first saw these bright lights over Boulogne coming down slowly. Like fireworks!’ The British pre-war firework industry had created special markers, packed with pyrotechnic candles, which cascaded in bright colours.2 Max Potter in Paris spoke of dramatic lights on the night he was bombed: ‘All of a sudden, a sort of orange glow. I opened the curtains and I saw the apocalypse! The sky was like the scenery of a theatre set, orange, the mouth of a blast furnace, everything was aglow.’ The sky became terrible, burning and deadly. Josette Dutilleul in Hellemmes, awakened by the bombing of Lille-Délivrance, said that ‘the whole sky was red!’ Bernard Bauwens in Boulogne-Billancourt was also struck by the unnatural light that flooded the kitchen:  ‘You had this white light. Like the sun, but not yellow. White. Terrible. Everything was lit up.’ All three emphasise the strange invasive light. They try to describe it through concrete images – a furnace, the sun – but the colours were unreal and foreboding: red for danger, orange like fire, blinding white. The light show became truly spectacular when the anti-aircraft fire (Défense contre avions, DCA) began; against the backdrop of garish colours appeared flashes, beams and sparks. Further away, children reacted to this vision with excitement. At a distance bombing was not frightening; a condition for fear was proximity. Josette remembered the searchlights, ‘which moved back and forth, but when they followed slowly in v 92 v

Being bombed one direction, it was because they’d found the plane’. She recognised the terrible game of hide and seek that was taking place inside the mesh of beams. For Henri Le Turquais and Yves Le Roy in Brest, the scene was compelling. Their description contains a rush of childish excitement: a game of war played out in reality: Henri: It was sensational, what a show! Yves: Like fireworks – Henri: And the tracer bullets, touc touc touc touc! Yves: You could really see them – Henri: Some came from one side, sometimes they came from the other –

They watched avidly, like spectators at a tennis match, now miming their actions with boyish delight visible on their faces. Serge Aubrée also in Brest painted, with his artist’s sensibility, a verbal picture of the night sky, at once beautiful and frightening: It was like a firework display. There were all sorts of glowing lights which overlapped each other. There were the searchlights hunting down planes in the dark. If you allowed yourself to – if you weren’t afraid that – It took a while to realise because of the beauty – beauty’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but, well, let’s say the intrigue of this sight. You didn’t think about it, you only saw the images.

Serge left certain sentences unfinished. He could lose himself in the wonder of the scene, forgetting his anxieties, forgetting the purpose of those tracers and searchlights, just for a moment. Smells of bombing were only mentioned in two narratives, and both times were smells of the aftermath. As Jean Pochart made his way across Brest in the aftermath of a raid, a mass of acrid odours assaulted his nostrils: ‘These smells of powder, of burning, all the smells in the air, added to the smoke – because the Germans had set off smoke bombs so that the town was under a blanket of fog. Well, all of that, it caught in the back of your throat.’ These were smells of danger, indicating collapsed masonry, fire and the noxious fog. Josette Dutilleul (Hellemmes) recounted the smell seeping into her home; like the light, it was invasive: ‘Plaster, when it fell, when it was crushed, it smells, it smells, it has a particular smell. If you could, you’d get a hanky or something so you didn’t breathe it in.’ As with the cloying rubber of the gas masks, these odours entered the body and obstructed breathing. They were perils in themselves, as well as indications of danger. Sound played the most important role in the experience of being bombed and is prominent across all the narratives. It is also the most v 93 v

Experiencing bombing frequent trigger of flashbacks in the present. Perhaps because so many people survived their air raids underground, they saw little of the raids in proximity. But this alone does not explain why the cacophony of an air raid provoked such strong responses. Rather, what mattered was what the noises signified and how children learnt to interpret them: within sounds lay clues to survival. Emphasis was commonly placed on the sound sequence. Max Potter said, ‘what I heard above all was the whistling, fsssssssshhhhhhhhh, and afterwards the noise seemed to push itself down into the ground’. André Dutilleul too said that after the whistle and the impact there came ‘the explosion, and the ground shook’. Whistle, thud and boom contained within them news of one’s own survival: the bombs had fallen elsewhere. The noises were terrifying. Jean Caniot said that in Lille they were ‘hellish! Terrible! We heard the explosions, the rumbling, it was awful.’ In Hellemmes, André Dutilleul likened the sound to ‘a steel truck transporting gravel. When it tips it out, rrrooooaaaaaarrrr. It was like that.’ Explosions and blast set off all sorts of other sounds. In the cellar, Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt) remembered hearing ‘the windows shattering, things falling over, glass breaking’; crouching under his kitchen table in Aulnoye, Jean Denhez and his siblings heard ‘the water pitcher above us explode with the blast. The windows, the furniture, everything was flying, flying around, it was shaking, it was banging, it made a terrible racket.’ The shattering of disintegrating homes was accompanied by that eerie sound ‘the siren which was wailing’, which haunted Yvette Cadiou’s memory (Brest). On Serge Aubrée’s street in Brest, ‘there was a truck there driving up and down with DCA machine guns on it, following the planes: taran ta ta ta ta, taran ta ta ta ta. When that went past our house, it made a noise like thunder.’ The variety of sounds was overwhelming, but each one told a story and together created memories of infernal chaos. Learning to interpret noises could bring reassurance or indicate safety. Adults, with greater knowledge of the world, initially explained what different sounds meant. Jean Pochart’s (Brest) father explained that as sound travelled faster than the bomb, ‘when you hear a bomb’s whistle, it can’t be one that’s coming for us. He reassured us like that, saying “this one, it’s not for us” ’. Jean said that this important sound was fixed in his memory. For Jean Caniot (Lille) too, the strong imprint of the memory came from the relief carried in the sound: ‘I can still hear it ringing in my ears, the whistling of the bombs, fssssssssshhhhhhhhh. And my father would say, “Don’t worry about that. If you hear it, it’s because it won’t fall on us.” ’ To hear the whistle was to have survived – this time. Through repeated v 94 v

Being bombed bombing, children learnt what the noises meant, although this did not mean they necessarily became less frightening. Noises were loud and abrupt, muffled and shaking, distant but approaching, or right outside, a warning, shock or a relief. For André Dutilleul, sound was the dominant sensory impression: bombing ‘made a noise that traumatised me’. Interviewees frequently attributed a lasting impression to these noises. Thérèse Leclercq in Hellemmes said that ‘what you remember is the noise. That low hum, waking up in the middle of the night’. Édith Denhez told me that ‘the noise of an air raid stays with you all your life. You still hear the bombs whistling. It’s hard to describe. But when you’ve been through it, it’s a noise you can still hear.’ Trapped inside the memory, these sounds are links to fear, survival and, in Édith’s case, to the suffering dealt out by a direct hit. Sensations are passive: they enter the body and cannot be controlled. But when they enter the body, they change it, and are captured inside the emotional responses expressed as the interviewees reflected on the past.

Hope, fear and despair: emotional responses to bombing In their bomb shelters, family members, neighbours, friends and strangers huddled anxiously together or retreated into prayer. In the shelter in Hellemmes, André Dutilleul said ‘we all did the same thing’, hunching himself over, ‘we were like that, handkerchief in the hand, right up close together, waiting for the end of the world’. Danielle Durville (Boulogne-Billancourt) performed her memory, ‘you sunk your head down into your shoulders’. In the large cellar where Bernard Bauwens was sheltering next to the Renault factory, all his neighbours were ‘crouching on the ground’, as though trying to get as far as possible away from the danger overhead. Madame Th (Boulogne-Billancourt) described the ‘human reflex to cling to each other’ and Cécile Bramé (Brest) said, ‘we hung on tight to our parents’. For others, human comfort was not enough. Max Potter said: ‘I prayed. I still had faith at that time, so I prayed.’ Michel Floch in Brest remembered that ‘we said “Saint Theresa, pray for us”. We said our rosaries over and over again. We were terrified’; on another occasion, ‘everyone was there with their rosary, “Hail Mary, full of Grace” ’. Prayer provided comfort, and gave an impression of agency; human impotence could be countered, perhaps, with an appeal for divine assistance. Serge Aubrée was not a believer. When he entered a cellar in Brest alone during a raid, ‘I was struck by what I saw: everyone there was praying’. He did not pray, but desperately hoped ‘that it would finish’ – and v 95 v

Experiencing bombing it did, the cellar unscathed. Serge wryly wondered ‘if those prayers had made a difference!’ Josette Dutilleul chanted to herself, ‘Dear God! Let it not be us!’ Actively calling for God’s intervention was widespread; it added substance to hope and empowered against the unreliability of luck. Some narrators remarked  – with a little surprise  – that they had not been afraid. Lucienne Rémeur was fourteen when she underwent repeated heavy bombing during the siege of Brest. She does not recall any fear, putting this partly down to her character – ‘it’s my nature, I’m no scaredy-cat’, she remarked, but also added that ‘at that age, I  think you don’t see the danger’. Likewise, Yvette Chapalain in Brest: ‘Well, me, I  was fourteen, I  wasn’t scared. I  don’t feel that I  was afraid.’ Lucienne had to look after her injured mother during this period, and Yvette had younger siblings in her care: perhaps their fear was diverted. Bombing could be terrifying, but many remembered remaining quite calm. Michel and Claude Thomas remembered that during the March Renault raid, there was, in their cellar: Michel: No panic at all – Claude: It was a complete surprise, and in the end everyone was very calm. I don’t know why. But it’s true, it was particularly calm – Michel: Yes, I agree. Or there was resignation – Claude: No panic – Michel: No panic, no breakdowns – Claude: No, no. Michel: And not ever. Not even later – Claude: It was resignation.

This was not the case everywhere. In the same raid, neighbours in Bernard Bauwens’ shelter ‘were going crazy’. But, instead of panicking, ‘I started doing my homework’, although he stopped abruptly when his exercise book ‘was thrown onto the ground by the blast’. Not all children were traumatised, or even frightened, by the air raids they underwent. Age, character and support were important factors mediating fear, as were circumstantial distractions. Some of children’s imperviousness to fear came from their limited knowledge about the nature of the threat and their limited agency: they could not yet imagine where this would lead. Dependence created a feeling of security, and their inability to alter the situation resigned them to their fate. But experiences varied. Some of the children were terribly frightened. In Boulogne-Billancourt, Michèle Martin stated emphatically:  ‘I was scared. I was terrified.’ With similar emphasis, Marie-Thérèse Termote in v 96 v

Being bombed Hellemmes, whose mother watched boldly at the window, said: ‘Me, well, I was scared. I was very scared. I was very, very scared.’ Like Lucienne Rémeur, Marie-Thérèse attributed her response to her own personality, ‘well, I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat by nature’. For younger children, destructive chaos could multiply fear. Thérèse Leclercq, also in Hellemmes, considered her age significant in how frightened she had been: ‘children of four or five, we were scared’. Still in early childhood, she and her classmates had fewer resources available to process what they saw. She was unable to imagine ways out of the chaos around her. The world had become incomprehensible. Describing an occasion when she was bombed at home, she indicates the intensity of an overwhelming sensory experience: It was whistling, there was a whistle, an explosion, a whistle, an explosion. My brother was shaking so much, and my mother, she thought the walls were cracking, because we could hear everything cracking up in the blast, and this rumbling overhead rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, a perpetual humming that was so chilling. I lived in fear until the end of the war. Fear.

These terrifying noises and the muted reassurance she received created the conditions for traumatisation. Thérèse describes none of her own activities here: she appears in her narrative as frozen, entirely unable to act; we perceive her surroundings, but she appears passive. A similar family experience took place in Lomme when the RAF raided Lille-Délivrance in April 1944 (see Figure 2). Once again, the effect of the physical sensations to Michel Jean-Bart’s body and a diminished feeling of security had a profound effect: ‘Children,’ my mother said, ‘this one’s for us. Don’t be afraid.’ And then, we prayed, cried, screamed. I remember it. Like it was yesterday. It was then that the house exploded into pieces, the window pffffffffffff smashed into pieces. We saw the glows from the bombs, the dust, everything, everything was swept away. For three quarters of an hour. Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror.

In narrating the story, Michel became distressed, such was the intensity of the memory. Like Pierre Haigneré, encountered at the beginning of this chapter, Michel and Thérèse were younger than eleven years old. Thérèse was very young and little beyond the familiar made sense; nor would her linguistic skills have been well developed at the moment the memory was laid down, perhaps accounting for some of her difficulty describing it. Michel was ten years old and Pierre eight. They could imagine something of the potential consequences of air raids; never having been bombed until this moment, the element of surprise was also important. v 97 v

Experiencing bombing

Figure 2  Interviewee Michel Jean-Bart survived the air raid of 10 April 1944 here, in his family home, rue Pierre Fosfer in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance (Lomme), near to Lille. Proximity to danger developed the intensity of the response as, in these cases, the houses in which the boys sheltered were damaged or destroyed. Furthermore, the reassurance the children needed was compromised by their parents’ own fear. Surviving an air raid was a varied experience. André Dutilleul rather enjoyed them, when they were reasonably distant. But when overhead, he said, ‘then, that was fear. Panicked fear. You don’t say anything, you clench your teeth. A few screams from outside, but we were there, scared stiff.’ Fear or fearlessness did not depend on any one factor; it was created v 98 v

Being bombed by a concoction of external and internal variables. The narratives emphasise just how reliant the children were on their parents for physical and emotional protection. Parents often played the private world equivalent of the public world défense passive in terms of alert and shelter, but they also heightened fear when unable to reassure or when absent. Outside of the home, some older children made sensible choices; in narratives, this personal agency was often constructed as life-saving. Appearing to have made the right decision mitigated traumatic consequence in the storytelling. The raid itself was less present than the memory of the decision and the shared possibility of what could have happened otherwise. Prayer also created a feeling of control and the fact of survival endorsed the power of such beliefs. The sensory experience of bombing was intense. It could be fascinating or exciting, even beautiful. However, the sound of bombs and their destructive explosions and blasts nearby imprinted on memory, leaving strong emotional reverberations into adult lives. Sound indicated the scale of the threat, but it also enabled children to interpret the likelihood of survival. The ability to learn what sounds meant demonstrated that children were adapting to being bombed; however, their understanding was still limited. At one level, ignorance could protect them from imagining frightening consequences; indeed, anything that was too abstract remained outside their realm of comprehension. At another level, this ignorance also prevented them from imagining courses of action that could protect them physically. Across the world, the civilian experience of being bombed during the Second World War has left its mark on those who experienced it as children. Using oral histories produces an impression of what it was like to huddle in the shelter, praying and desperately hoping. They bring out the texture of experience through the intensity of repeated motifs, using metaphors and similes to communicate a version of experience to those of us lucky enough never to have been bombed. Unexpressed emotions and experiences are suggested by sentences unfinished, hanging beyond memory or language. While experienced differently by all individuals, bombing was a shared event, as people sought reassurance within their social networks:  family, classmates, neighbours. Thus there exist pockets of shared memory. Because local experiences were so diverse it may not be that a ‘collective’ national memory of bombing can exist, although elements are common across towns, such as the sound of bombs and its interpretation. It is worth noting that not all of the children experienced terror during bombing. For some, curiosity, ignorance and calmness meant that bombing could v 99 v

Experiencing bombing be tolerated. Several narrators explicitly rejected the idea of having been traumatised; the war in France held different horrors for them, as we will see in Chapter 10. For some of the younger children, however – old enough to recognise death, hurt or loss but young enough to be dependent – the moment of bombing was uniquely terrifying.

Notes 1 Mercier and Despert, ‘Psychological effects of the war’, pp. 67–8. 2 M. Middlebrook and C.  Everitt (eds.), The Bomber Command War Diaries:  An Operational Reference Book, 1939–45 (Hersham:  Midland Publishing, 1996; 1st edn, 1985), p. 336.

v 100 v

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An evolving response

Thérèse Leclercq: When went to bed, we’d always get some warm clothes ready in case we had to go down to the cellar. At the time there was no central heating, nothing at all. So I remember my parents prepared all sorts of little blankets to put round our shoulders, but I could never fall asleep down there. If the siren went off, my parents said to us ‘you have to do this’ or ‘you have to do that’. I learnt what to do. My little sister was born in 1942, so my mother always carried her down there, I had my older brother, and everyone knew what they had to do. Except I  was naughty  – I’d bolt out into the street, every time. I’d run out into the street, because on the corner of our road there was a house that had been bombed. When the siren went off, I’d run outside because I wanted to go inside the ‘broken houses’. Once a house had been bombed, I thought ‘this house has already been broken, they won’t break it again’. It’s what I thought when I was a child. They weren’t going to bother landing another bomb in a house that was already destroyed! Lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Of course, it was all chance really.

For many civilians, including young children like Thérèse Leclercq, bombing became a part of daily life. Families developed routines in which even the youngest participated. Not only was there a practical evolution in responses to bombing, but the repeated danger caused an evolution in children’s understanding. Born in 1938, Thérèse in Hellemmes, an industrial suburb of Lille, was put on her guard by the repeated air raids; having been bombed before, she acted on the basis of experience, but the logic of her response was grounded in an absence of real knowledge of how the world worked. Her narrative gives us insight into her interiority, fundamental if children are to be conceptualised as agents. Here, the ‘broken houses’ illustrate a process of comprehension, decision-making and action:  this is the kind of ‘appropriate and purposeful behaviour’ v 101 v

Experiencing bombing which Mercier and Despert remarked upon in their 1943 report on the psychological effects of war on French children.1 This response made sense to the little Thérèse within her limited but evolving understanding. Allied bombing policy, too, evolved as the war progressed, bringing changes to targets, technology and tactics. As policy developed, so did the way in which the French State and local authorities met the challenge. Further down the scale, families and individuals also adapted their behaviour under the bombs.

Evolution of the threat To understand the evolution of the response, we must understand the evolution of the threat. The Allies bombed France during different campaigns that targeted objectives in different regions; as new campaigns began, new towns came into range.2 The first campaign from June 1940 into 1941 sought to destroy the German invasion fleet amassing on the north coast, and to damage French airfields used by the Luftwaffe. Ports along the west coast were bombed as the Battle of the Atlantic got underway, and Brest became a key target from December 1940 because several German warships were docked there. Submarine bases along the Atlantic coast were targeted from late 1940, although this campaign peaked in early 1943 when Lorient fell victim to the Allies’ only official area bombing operation in France. From January 1941, various targets across northern France, including some around Lille, were bombed in ‘circus’ raids aiming to draw the Luftwaffe into action. Three major policy changes appeared during 1942 and had a bearing on civilian experience. First, a new campaign began against French factories working for Germany; these urban raids increased civilian casualties. The first large factory raid was on Renault in Boulogne-Billancourt (3 March 1942), followed by raids on Matford-Ford at Poissy, the Gnôme-Rhône aero-engine works at Gennevilliers, the Villacoublay aircraft works, Citröen’s Quai de Javel plant in Paris, the Schneider works at Le Creusot and Gnôme-Rhône at Le Mans. Second, from August 1942 the USAAF began bombing France. The Americans could bomb from a higher altitude than the RAF because of the supposed (although not actual) precision of the Norden bombsight. Out of reach of anti-aircraft fire, they could therefore bomb in daylight. Third, until the Germans invaded the ‘Free Zone’ on 11 November 1942, air raids had been restricted to the Occupied Zone. After that date, the whole territory came under fire. There was a further intensification of bombing during 1943, in v 102 v

An evolving response the campaign against the U-boat bases along the western coast, and the ‘Crossbow’ raids on the V1 launch sites in Northern France. During 1944, the scale of Allied raids increased dramatically as part of three campaigns. The rail network, its rolling stock, track and workshops, had long been a target, but from early 1944, it became the priority as the Transportation Plan got underway. Seventy-nine points were identified, from Normandy to the Loire, in the Paris region, the north-east and Belgium. Then, in the three months following D-Day, Norman ports and villages and towns situated at cross-roads were bombed and bombers also supported ground forces with mixed results. Finally, there were also enormous raids on the Atlantic ‘fortresses’ where German garrisons held on in ‘pockets’ or ‘nests’. During 1944, France experienced its worst destruction to infrastructure, industry and life. France had to adapt to changes in Allied technology and tactics too. Earlier in the war, raids tended to be lighter and shorter, but as production of planes and bombs increased, so did the scale of raids. The first on Boulogne-Billancourt was a landmark. Until then, ‘heavy’ raids were those in which more than fifty bombers participated. On 3 March 1942, 235 bombers dropped 419 tons of bombs.3 During the U-boat campaign of early 1943 Bomber Command dropped more than 1,000 tons on one target in a single raid. Bombs also got bigger. In the first raid on Renault, the twenty-five biggest bombs weighed 4,000lb; by 1944, the Allies were dropping 12,000lb ‘Tallboy’ bombs on the Atlantic ports, albeit in small numbers. Accuracy and navigation also evolved. The March raid on Renault used a new ‘intensified system of flare illumination’. Fifteen Wellingtons dropped phosphorescent markers, lighting the factories throughout the attack.4 This raid was experimental. The new navigational aid Gee was also tested and then used in France for difficult targets such as the Gien tank park in July 1942.5 Certain changes to the tactics of bombing France were politically motivated. Despite calls from the Chief of Air Staff to bomb the ‘Free Zone’ during 1941, political chiefs refused, as Vichy France was still technically neutral. In October 1942, following several months of industrial raids, the official bombing policy statement required that if doubt existed over risks to densely populated areas ‘no attack is to be made’.6 There was a desire in the Foreign Office not to upset relations with de Gaulle’s supporters. Political caution receded, however, as friendly shipping losses nearly doubled to 7.7 million tons in 1942 and the decision was taken to area bomb the Biscay ports in mid-January 1943 (the campaign was called off after Lorient was area bombed without destroying its submarine bases).7 The Transportation v 103 v

Experiencing bombing Plan provoked the fiercest arguments. RAF chiefs were reluctant to expend so much effort on France, and politicians feared the repercussions that massive French civilian casualties would cause, but the Overlord command team overruled objections. The political leaders had lost control of bombing policy, and the heavy bombing of spring and summer 1944 resulted from a power shift towards military expediency.

Vichy’s response to the threat In all the hardships French civilians faced, Vichy foregrounded its protective role – from which it drew legitimacy – embodied in the paternal figure of Marshal Pétain. Its air raid protection contributed to that role. Yet Vichy was no monolith. Stanley Hoffman identified Vichy as a ‘pluralist dictatorship’; this was elaborated by Robert Paxton as the Vichy of the National Revolution, the Vichy of the technocrats and the Vichy of the collaborationists.8 Until 1942, the Vichy of the National Revolution and the traditionalists was ascendant, although it lost ground to the technocrats during Admiral Darlan’s premiership. Following Laval’s return to power in April 1942, the collaborationists moved further onto the stage, seeking closer alliance with Germany, and with an increasing ideological commitment to fascism. In early 1944, French fascists Philippe Henriot, Marcel Déat and Joseph Darnand entered the government. The technocrats  – experts who obtained powerful administrative positions when elected politicians lost their posts in 1940  – were a constant presence at Vichy. As resources dwindled in France, the administrative apparatus of the state grew, as did its presence in people’s lives. The influence of the three Vichys is evident in the state’s responses to the evolution of bombing. Several times during 1941 and 1942, Vichy or its representatives attempted to protest about the bombing of France. In spring 1941, Fernand de Brinon, the Vichy government’s representative to the German High Command in Paris (and an influential collaborator) protested against recent raids on Lorient and Brest, in an attempt to discredit the British. Around the same time, two complaints arrived in London from the mayor of Dieppe and the municipal council of Le Havre, both criticising the bombing of residential areas. Attributed to a German-managed campaign, they were ignored by London.9 A formal protest from Vichy over high-altitude attacks on Lille and Brest in August 1941 reached Churchill and led, on paper, to the alteration of bombing policy of October 1942: planes should not bomb if accuracy was doubtful. Vichy’s v 104 v

An evolving response protests via its ambassador in Washington were sharply countered by the Foreign Office, which was concerned that they might ‘find a certain sympathy in United States official circles’.10 Such protests faded away after 1942. The French government continued to condemn Allied air raids but only as part of its domestic propaganda, which attempted to harness immediate popular anger against bombing for the collaborationist cause. Another part of Vichy’s evolving response was to offer visible moral support to victims of bombing. Marshal Pétain or his representative Colonel Bonhomme were usually on the spot after heavy air raids, visiting hospitals and attending funeral services. Pétain’s presence elevated local tragedies to national importance, intending to reassure people that the state was actively helping.11 They also boosted his personal prestige. Even in 1944 when his popularity had waned, Pétain’s bombsite walkabouts still drew crowds. Vichy’s presence in the ruins and at ceremonies sought to re-establish broken trust, lost through collaboration, deportation and repression. A further gesture of support was the establishment of a twinning programme between bombed and (as yet) safe towns, on a model hijacked from a private venture led by Cardinal Gerlier in 1941 that twinned Brest with Lyon. In January 1942, the Ministry of the Interior announced that further twinning initiatives would be centrally controlled.12 With government steering, private acts of charity were shifted into the public sphere, harnessed to Vichy’s drive for national solidarity. If Pétain’s visits were designed to show his paternal care for the French people, then the twinning programme evoked a fraternal nation. After the chaotic mass exodus of survivors following the area bombing of Lorient in January 1943, Pierre Laval attempted to impose more control on the government’s activity in the aftermath of bombing by centralising and coordinating all services. Part of this task had begun in May 1942 when the Ministry of the Interior issued its first information bulletin, which became a monthly publication through which information about bombs, bombing and shelters was disseminated. But Laval hoped too for political gain. In early 1943, Vichy was losing its grip on power. Pétain was a figurehead; the National Revolution had stalled. Offering relief to civilians after bombing became a significant act, boosting the government’s presence in people’s lives. In the face of demands for French labour in Germany, round-ups of Jews led by French police, harsher rationing and mounting civil unrest, this was a positive intervention in civilian life. In February 1943 the Service Interministériel de Protection contre les Événements de Guerre (Interministerial Protection Service against the Events of War – SIPEG) was formed to coordinate the work v 105 v

Experiencing bombing of diverse public bodies with the intention of improving effectiveness – although its success is this respect is unclear. It placed delegates in each département, and had two well-publicised emergency trains to dispatch to bombed locations, with converted medical carriages, and stocked with supplies.13 The state also developed a system of financial assistance for victims of bombing as part of its evolving response. State aid to bombing victims was rooted in a Republican obligation to provide welfare and the entitlement of war victims to state assistance. It sought to get lives back to some kind of normality in the short term, and rebuild communities in the longer term. A decree of 2 November 1940 entitled a needy sinistré (bombed-out person) to the same daily benefit rate (allocation) as a refugee, limited to a three-month period. This was ten francs a day for the head of the household, six francs per other adult, twelve francs for each child over thirteen years old and seven francs for each younger child; a payment of three francs per day per person for rent and heating was also included.14 A sinistré was classed as needy if he/she earned less than the maximum total allowance. A bombed-out Parisian metalworker with a wife and two children, one older than thirteen years, could receive forty-seven francs per day, but as his wage in June 1941 was about fifty-four francs per day, he would not have qualified for the allowance: the family was poor but not classed as needy.15 Furthermore, the allocation de sinistré remained fixed from November 1940 to May 1943 while official prices increased by more than half, and all prices – black market included – had more than doubled.16 The evolution of the bombing campaign to include industrial targets triggered changes to policy in September 1942. Emergency financial aid could now be attributed to all those ‘whose home has been rendered uninhabitable by an act of war’: it was no longer restricted to the needy.17 It comprised a payment of sixty days refugee allocation (at the 1940 rate) for partial sinistrés, and one hundred days for total sinistrés. Funeral expenses would be paid up to 800 francs, and a contribution made towards removal costs. Yet the situation changed little for the poor, as forced wage increases because of inflation had made it even more difficult to qualify for an allocation de sinistré.18 Official prices had increased by 92 per cent since 1940, and all prices by more than 200 per cent, but the allocation remained the same; it was insufficient to meet food requirements, let alone other expenses. A third change in May 1943 fixed emergency aid, available to all, at 1,000 francs or 1,500 francs per person, depending on the extent of the damage, and the contribution to funeral expenses v 106 v

An evolving response increased to 1,000 francs. Removal costs were still covered. The allocation de sinistré for the needy had increased, and for the family described above, would have reached fifty-five francs per day. A  fourth batch of legislation in January 1944 altered the criteria for neediness, and changed the rate of allowances; the family would now receive seventy-two francs per day for the first three months after being bombed-out, and fifty-nine francs per day after that. An additional monthly 300 francs was available for needy elderly people. The French State also tried to help sinistrés in the long term to re-establish destroyed households. For the neediest, the state would contribute 90 per cent of the cost of new furniture. Longer-term aid was not restricted to the poor. A furniture allowance was available to all, the sum dependent upon family size and prior insurance policies. Furniture was also loaned.19 The state contributed up to 70 per cent of the costs of rebuilding houses, and from May 1943, architects’ fees for redrafting houses were capped.20 From July 1941, ‘disability pensions’ became available for those disabled by bombing and in 1944 pensions for widows and orphans were introduced.21 The French State, therefore, tried to influence the bombers, tried to influence international opinion, tried to influence French opinion, and also hoped to use air raids to unite the nation behind the regime; it also tried to support bombed-out civilians. These responses met with limited success. In particular, the state’s provision of aid was riddled with problems. Neediness was calculated on a salary so low that it excluded many from its remit and allocation was a slow procedure, entitlement having to be proven with evidence, interviews and visits. The lumbering bureaucratic machine left sinistrés dependent on other agencies and on the social networks of family and community.

Evolution of local responses The responsibility for défense passive rested on the shoulders of the prefects and their departmental committees, with tasks delegated to mayors. The local response to bombing needed most flexibility in the absence of a coordinated national impetus until the SIPEG was established. Local administrative characteristics, the influence of the occupiers and the frequency and weight of bombing all affected the evolution of local responses.22 Until bombs actually fell, little development happened in local défense passive, partly because of inertia, partly because of an inability to imagine the threat as it was and partly as a result of material deficiency. v 107 v

Experiencing bombing Civil defence was more urgent and justifiable in combatant nations as part of a national war effort; it was much harder to maintain in France where the impetus to mobilise against an enemy was weaker. Once the bombs had fallen, organisational flaws were revealed in the Paris area, where the 3 March 1942 raid on Boulogne-Billancourt sparked a series of improvements in défense passive. While local rescue teams saved around 200 people within the first two hours, problems arose as communications were damaged and blocked. No siren had sounded, so trench shelters remained locked. Teams of workers, firemen and ambulances from central Paris arrived five hours late. By 20 April, the Town Hall had drafted an improvement plan. Yet problems arose from the departmental stranglehold on coordination, as municipal medical, fire and rescue teams communicated with departmental chiefs, not each other. The town proposed a local committee to bring different branches together, and sought to recruit more volunteers. It was now understood that first-aid posts were needed in each sector of the town, not just at the Town Hall.23 Such changes were echoed at the departmental level. Following raids on the Parisian industrial suburbs in spring 1942, the département of the Seine created the Service d’Aide aux Localités Sinistrés (Aid Service for Bombed-Out Areas – SALS) to coordinate activity. Once again, developments responded to needs exposed by experience. SALS appeared ten months before SIPEG was handed the same task nationwide. Indeed, SALS was a competent organisation, and in May 1944, Laval endowed the Prefect of the Seine to act outside SIPEG’s remit to control the response to bombing in the Seine.24 March 1942, therefore, was a watershed at both municipal and departmental levels. The experience of the Seine showed that with active municipalities and strong prefectoral direction, civilian protection could be improved. In comparison with the Seine, Brest experienced greater German intervention in running local défense passive. Although the French personnel had some practical autonomy, command rested with the Kreiskommandant, creating friction.25 However, because the Germans needed to keep workers at the arsenal and port safe, the French authorities could make demands which benefited civilians, such as calling for good sirens.26 They maintained pressure on the Germans until two large, deep shelters were built (one being the ill-fated Sadi-Carnot shelter), and the compulsory evacuation of children was authorised. Tight German control on Brest’s population and municipal staff, and repeated bombing from 1940, meant that problems were dealt with regularly and early. v 108 v

An evolving response With little coordination, and more confrontational relations with the Germans, Lille’s Town Hall struggled to respond effectively to bombing. By the end of July 1940 there was already conflict over civil defence. First the mayor’s authority to sound the siren was removed, and then the Germans instructed the French authorities to make changes to municipal civil defence facilities according to their own specifications, although the costs fell on the French.27 Prefect Carles was angry at having to pay to protect Germans and not French people and refused to build shelters for German soldiers.28 But with a serious shelter shortage for everyone, Carles was exacerbating a situation whereby local people were barred from entering the shelters that did exist. That autumn, German inspectors complained to the mayor about Lille’s filthy first aid posts, citing ‘a certain intentional negligence’, which also endangered the civilian population.29 Poor local services were not solely the product of non-compliance. Despite a year of bombing, in early 1942 défense passive across the Nord was criticised by Carles for the ‘inconsistency of team members’, their ‘inertia’, and the ‘inadequacy of special training’.30 His judgement was harsher following heavy raids in autumn 1942. These raids had exposed the deficient activity in the event of an air raid in Lille, a deficiency to which the attention of your leaders has been drawn on numerous occasions […] Examples of negligence and failure […] have provoked a lot of emotion and angry responses.31

But little improvement happened, as a complaint received by the mayor in August 1944 from the president of the union of shopkeepers on rue Gambetta revealed. First, ‘the official rescue services arrived too late at the bombed building’. But worse, When these services turned up, we saw such a diversity of organisations that it was impossible to recognise which was which: police, fire brigade, first aiders, DP [Défense Passive], male and female nurses, Red Cross, Secours National, this youth group, that youth group, etc. Each organisation, bitterly jealous of its own autonomy, needed some kind of order or command, but would not obey anyone else. At the end of the day, they did nothing useful. Indeed, their presence only increased the confusion that already existed.32

The traders washed their hands of the municipal services and set up their own local vigilance committee. Lille’s situation was a product of power struggles, a will to resist and the financial hardships besetting the Town Hall. The rue Gambetta case underlines a collective solidarity at that excluded the authorities altogether. v 109 v

Experiencing bombing In all three locations, the first air raid there revealed domestic cellars as inadequate shelters. From April 1942, Boulogne-Billancourt’s mayor required public use of factory shelters and the rapid reinforcement of large cellars underneath municipal public housing blocks. Since 1940, the possibility of using the Metro had been mooted, depending on safety modifications, but the insufficient building materials stalled the project.33 However, parts of certain tunnels were opened from June 1942 following public outcry.34 People turned instinctively to the Metro. The capacity of the authorised tunnels was 1,200 people. During the alert of 22 October 1942, 10,000 people crowded into Marcel Sembat station; following the air raids of September 1943, more than 15,000 people crushed into the Pont de Sèvres station.35 In Brest, shelter evolution was dramatic. Following the first daylight raid in July 1941, the mayor contacted Lorient’s mayor, who was constructing four deep shelters on the orders of the Kreiskommandant.36 By summer 1942, building materials were released by the Germans, and money from the Ministry of the Interior allocated to build two deep, high-capacity shelters. By February 1943, when bombing was heavy, around 8,000 people were regularly sheltering there.37 By designating ‘threatened zones’ from April 1942  – areas ‘more exposed than others to the danger of aerial bombardment’  – Vichy influenced local responses to bombing. Extra funding was available, particularly to encourage parents to evacuate children. Entire families could receive assistance with housing and rations if they wished to leave a threatened zone.38 But conferral of threatened status generally happened after a destructive raid. In Lille, four threatened zones were designated in April 1942, comprising the streets around the large Usine de Fives, Peugeot in Hellemmes, the Saint-Sauveur freight station, and the Tudor factory in South Lille.39 The same happened to the streets around Renault and the Air Liquide factory in Boulogne-Billancourt in November 1942 and the whole town became a threatened zone in September 1943.40 All schools closed, with a view to encouraging evacuation, motivated by so many children’s deaths on 4 April 1943.41 Mayors were desperate for German permission to evacuate vulnerable parts of their populations, and threatened status enabled them to tempt or threaten reluctant locals more. In Brest, schools closed from autumn 1941, and the compulsory evacuation of 12,000 of the ‘useless’ people (inutiles) (children, mothers, the elderly, the infirm) was authorised by the Germans in February 1943.42 The experience of evacuation is dealt with in Chapter 7. v 110 v

An evolving response

Family and personal responses Already, children’s ability to interpret the sounds of bombing was an evolution in understanding. Some became able to act more independently, although others remained dependent on their parents. And again, family-level activities echoed those of the local authorities. As the threat evolved, air raids became more familiar, and people developed strategies to cope. Folding bombing into the fabric of daily life enabled children to absorb it better, which could diminish its deleterious effects on emotional and psychological states; this was, of course, not always the case. Ordinary people learnt to judge the level of the threat and decide what action to take regardless of municipal sirens. In Hellemmes, Thérèse Leclercq’s family took shelter on her father’s command. In Henri Girardon’s family, precautions were only taken if the Americans – considered inaccurate  – were thought to be approaching Brest. Michel Floch, also in Brest, used to wish for ‘gloomier weather’ as when it was sunny, ‘voilà, come the evening, bombs, bombs’. One sign of imminent attack that children learnt to read was the silver papers dropped to jam German radar after July 1943. Max Potter (Paris) commented that it was ‘nerve-wracking’ when they fell as he knew what would follow: ‘When you saw that, you said “Oh là là!” ’ When children believed they understood the threat, they chose whether to take shelter: their evolving understanding was linked to independent decision-making. The decision about whether or not to shelter depended on the siren or on another warning, but in Hellemmes Josette Dutilleul triggered the alert for her family: I have very, very good hearing. So I’d hear the plans from far, far, far away, and as soon as I heard them, I’d get dressed. The night before, I’d lay out my clothes in order on my chair […] and as soon as my mother heard me get up, she’d get up; she’d say, ‘that’s it, if Josette’s heard the planes, we have to go’.

The girl was the family’s siren, her underlying anxiety evident in this hypervigilant behaviour. Not every family obeyed the municipal siren, creating a blur as to where authority lay. Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt) said ‘sometimes we’d go to the shelter, sometimes not’; similarly for Jean Pochart in Brest, ‘either we’d go, or we wouldn’t’. Parents could add to children’s anxiety by refusing to take shelter. When she heard the siren sound in Cambrai, Édith Denhez’s mother would say ‘Dying’s dying! Rather here than trapped in the cellar’ (a prediction, within Édith’s emplotted storytelling, of her brother’s fate). Sometimes v 111 v

Experiencing bombing when children sheltered, parents did not. Christian Solet’s father was stubborn. When the siren sounded, Christian remembered him shouting ‘Leave me alone! I’m sleeping!’ Lucienne Rémeur, in Brest during the siege, was taught to decide for herself:  ‘Mum said to me:  “If you don’t want to go [to the shelter], get under the bed, and above all protect your head.” ’ Some families gave responsibilities to their children. Simonne Lemaître in Mons-en-Barœul took charge of the family papers, while her older sister carried the dog. But parents could also raise anxieties through diligent organisation. Cécile Bramé drew a worrying conclusion from her mother’s instruction that she take the family papers and money in a bag tucked under her coat: ‘She warned us: “If anything happens to me, take the bag and go” ’. She now worried that something, ‘anything’, might happen to her mother. These instructions emphasised danger, but also endowed children with responsibility. Over time, bomb shelters could become sociable places. Spartan cellars were adapted to their new use, becoming an extension of the home. Christian de la Bachellerie (Boulogne-Billancourt) said people took chairs down, and ‘we settled in’. Madame Th remembered people trying to sleep, and Christian remembered anxious chatter. In the deep Sadi-Carnot shelter, where Brest’s remaining civilians lived during the siege in 1944, Lucienne recalled that there were ‘so many people! Some of them read, some slept. We didn’t have much we could do’. For Lucienne, it was a lonely time despite the crowds, as most other youngsters had been evacuated. Yet in other times and places, as for little Danielle Durville in Boulogne-Billancourt, shelter life was fun. The children ‘could chatter and play’ while adults wandered between interconnected cellars. Even while bombs were falling, if people felt safe then the shelter was not such a bad place to be. Henri Le Turquais (Brest) said that children played around during alerts, while Cécile Bramé and her family and neighbours sang to keep their spirits up. Being together, feeling protected and being in a familiar place could push fears aside. But as bombing evolved, routines had to adapt. People switched shelters as air raids worsened, depending on local resources. Some families commuted nightly away from home as air raids were often nocturnal. Christian de la Bachellerie said Each evening, we’d leave Boulogne, and we’d spend the night in the sixteenth arrondissement. So even if the siren went off, we could stay in bed and sleep. We’d come back in the morning, live our lives in Boulogne as my father’s business was there. We’d have lunch, dinner, and in the evening, we’d go. The whole family, for about two years. That way, we stayed calm.

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An evolving response His family could afford to rent rooms elsewhere. For the families in the Mont de Terre district of Hellemmes, close to the railway, it was also common to sleep away from home. Josette Dutilleul’s mother ‘found a little flat in Lezennes, teeny tiny, and we’d go and sleep there’. The whole family squeezed in, but felt safer. The upheaval of nocturnal commuting was disturbing, and depended on available resources and finances, but it enabled families to get enough sleep to function more normally, and gave people a sense of protecting themselves. Any element of control one could exert over the unpredictable danger was a comfort. At school, children were beyond their parents’ care, and had to adapt to different, sometimes contradictory, routines. At Henri Girardon’s school in Lambézellec, on hearing the siren, teachers kept children in classrooms to avoid crowding in the cellar in case it was struck; this contrasted with his family’s assiduous sheltering. Likewise, but inversely, in Cambrai Édith’s school routine was also the opposite of at home: ‘As soon as we heard the siren, we’d run, we’d cross the school garden, the courtyard, the mistresses’ garden, and psssssssch, they’d pull us into the cellar. They scared us, the mistresses.’ Her teachers’ behaviour emphasised the threat, while Édith’s mother downplayed it. The frequency of alerts required creative solutions at school. The teachers at Bernard Lemaire’s school in Lille got tired of interruptions, and so ‘they set up classrooms in the basement’. Many schools did not have cellars. For Sonia Agache in Hellemmes, the shelters were ‘behind the school in the park [where] they’d dug some trenches’, whereas Josette Dutilleul, elsewhere in Hellemmes, went ‘under the church where they’d strutted the cellars’. In Aulnoye, Jean Denhez said his teacher ‘made us leave the school and lie on our bellies on the ground behind some mounds of earth’. Jean found it exciting: ‘It was fun! We weren’t scared.’ Jean Caniot (Lille) and Max Potter (Paris) found silver linings in repeated alerts. In the cellar at Jean’s school, ‘we weren’t scared, we’d play around!’ Some of the less diligent students ‘loved air raid alerts, because they wouldn’t have to hand in their homework’. Max Potter saw further perks: ‘We’d go down to the cellar with the girls!’ Both the girls’ and boys’ schools used the same cellar. ‘It was lots of fun!’ he said. These older boys incorporated alerts into their academic and social lives – the siren was not always bad news. There were occasions, even, when one could hope for the siren. Such were the restrictions on movement around Brest that meeting in the church crypt was a chance for Andréa Cousteaux to see her friends: ‘ “Let’s hope there’s a raid tonight”, because there we’d chat, we’d laugh.’ For André Dutilleul there was a similar festive mood at the quarries in v 113 v

Experiencing bombing Lezennes: ‘ “See you next time!” I met girls there, we’d arrange to meet, in the afternoon at the football pitch over there.’ Alerts were thus social occasions for adolescents. Many children also played the shrapnel game. Barely waiting for the all clear, Serge Aubrée would rush out to collect lumps of twisted metal. The next day at school, ‘whoever’d got the best bit would win’. However, when the bombing of Brest became more deadly, the shrapnel ‘didn’t have the same value’. Children found entertainment in bombing despite the danger: testimony to habituation, resilience and ignorance. Yet as Serge indicated, children recognised when ‘it became serious’; when it stopped being fun, fear returned. The response to bombing actively evolved, at national, local and personal levels. The state responded, making use of bombing, and developed measures to counter its destructive impact, but as idiographic events, air raids created very particular problems, in particular places at particular moments. The proximity of bombs to residential areas depended on location and greatly influenced the subjective experiences of people underneath. The active evolution of the response to bombing was more or less successful depending on local circumstances. Importantly, it was always a response. Very little pre-emptive work was done to prepare for heavy raids before they happened. Only afterwards could the authorities imagine what might be necessary for next time. Municipal authorities faced a number of obstacles which impeded the provision of protection and assistance to their populations. Responses at a family level varied from location to location and from family to family. The development of domestic routines constituted an active response to bombing, and a preparation for next time. The private sphere thus adapted to new conditions in the public world of war, with a consequent effect on children. Routines developed in response to the frequency of bombing and showed an acceptance of the intrusion of bombing into daily life. While habituation could create complacency, this was evidence of understanding, adaptation and resilience. Alerts and raids were even incorporated into games and social activities. Repeated raids could also diminish fears. After a while, Danielle Durville played in the street ‘in the rubble, that didn’t bother us. We got used to the noise, the bombs, the sirens’. In Brest, alerts became so regular, that their absence was strange. Andréa remembered exclaiming ‘ “Wait a sec! Wasn’t there an air raid yesterday night?” “No!” “Oh, well that’s why I slept all night.” ’ Josette in Hellemmes agreed: ‘I think we got used to it all. We lived with the bombs.’ v 114 v

An evolving response But some ignorance was a kind of protection:  ‘As a child, you don’t realise the real danger,’ Danielle said. Ignorance could make air raids tolerable. Jean Pochart commented that ‘we weren’t really conscious of the danger’. Serge explained his progressive understanding of bombing: ‘There was a child’s ignorance. Before you’d seen a cruel air raid, you didn’t realise.’ Without knowledge of aftermath and consequence, children were protected. In this shift from ignorance to knowledge, many of the children experienced enduring anxiety. Although she later played on bombsites, for some time after the raid of 3 March 1942, upon hearing a siren, Danielle Durville would panic: ‘I could only think of one thing – getting to shelter.’ She described herself as ‘a bit traumatised’. Likewise for Sonia Agache in Hellemmes, having survived an air raid, the siren triggered the desire to run, even away from her parents. Bombed children wanted to hide; they no longer watched from the window. After the raid on La Chapelle in April 1944, Max Potter was afraid, even aged fourteen, to sleep on his own at night: ‘But afterwards, it was afterwards. Afterwards, it was really fear at night-time, it was anxiety. I slept in with my mother.’ Thérèse Leclercq also described herself as ‘traumatised’. Hearing the wail of the siren, she became ‘hysterical. My mother had to hold me, because I’d run straight out into the street.’ Thérèse and Danielle, the youngest of the interviewees, are rare among the group to describe themselves as having been traumatised. Age and maturity played a part in how well children learnt to cope with bombing, the older children having more independence of movement, which put them into risky situations. Older children also undertook active decision-making, although parents did confer responsibilities onto younger children that alerted them to frightening possibilities. The important collectivities here are family, locality and community, which may account for some of the absence of a national ‘collective memory’ of bombing. Common elements of experience occurred within communities because of the shared threat; however, when separate communities faced the same, or similar, threats, commonalities exist across them. Shared elements of memory are thus likely within and between communities. Emotional responses of excitement, fear, anxiety and shock existed in all of the locations, pointing towards a universality of qualitative experience, because of common ways of processing the sensory impressions of bombing and the emotional states they engendered. The aftermath of bombing proved equally enlightening; it is to the mess of the bombsite that I will now turn. v 115 v

Experiencing bombing

Notes 1 Mercier and Despert, ‘Psychological effects of the war’, p. 268. 2 For further details on Allied bombing policy, see Dodd and Knapp, ‘ “How many Frenchmen did you kill?” ’; Baldoli and Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes; Knapp, Les Français sous les bombes alliées. 3 TNA, AIR 19/217: Baker to Sinclair, 4 March 1942. 4 TNA, AIR 19/217: Baker to Sinclair, 4 March 1942. 5 TNA, AIR 19/217:  Portal to Chuchill, 26 January 1942; TNA, AIR 19/217: Sinclair to Churchill, 23 October 1942. 6 Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive, pp. 135–6, 143–4. 7 E. J. Grove (ed.), The Defeat of Enemy Shipping, 1939–45: Vol. 1B (Plans and Tables) (Aldershot: Navy Records Society, 1957), Plan 14; Roskill, War at Sea, p. 218. 8 S. Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France since the 1930s (New York: Viking Press, 1974), pp. 3–4; R. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1972), pp. 231, 262–83. 9 TNA, FO 371/28541: Mayor of Dieppe to Prefect of Seine-Inférieure, 15 March 1941; Piétri to Hoare, 20 April 1941; Hoare to Eden, 24 April 1941; minute by Mack, 13 May 1941; Declaration of the Municipal Council of Le Havre, 26 August 1941; Piétri to Hoare, 27 September 1941; minute by Speaight, 17 October 1941. 10 TNA, FO 371/31999:  Halifax to Foreign Office, 7 March 1942; Foreign Office to Halifax, 9 March 1942. 11 M. Schmiedel, ‘Orchestrated solidarity: the Allied air war in France and the development of local and state-organised solidarity movements’, in C. Baldoli, A. Knapp and R. Overy (eds.), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 206–18. 12 For more on twinning, bombing and solidarity, see Schmiedel, ‘Orchestrated solidarity’. 13 Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France, p. 270. 14 AML, 5H10.22:  Prefect of the Nord to deputy prefects and mayors, 5 December 1940. 15 A year later, this manual worker was earning, according to Sauvy, around 1,860 francs per month (61 francs per day) (A. Sauvy, La Vie économique des français de 1939  à 1945 (Paris:  Flammarion, 1978), pp.  128, 243). In his diary, Ruffin recorded that in April 1942, a state-employed middle-manager earned 2,500–3,500 francs per month, while a kilo of pork officially cost 17 francs, a kilo of chicken 24 francs, a kilo of butter 45 francs (R. Ruffin, Journal d’un J3 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1979), p. 97); J.-P. Le Crom, ‘L’assistance publique’, in P.-J. Hesse and J.-P. Le Crom (eds.), La Protection sociale sous Vichy (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2001), pp. 171–3. 16 Sauvy, La Vie économique, p. 166.

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An evolving response 17 Law of 1 September 1942 (JO, 18 September 1942). 18 Sauvy, La Vie économique, p. 201. 19 Laws of 13 May 1943 (JO, 12 June 1943), 6 January 1944 (JO, 19 January 1944), 12 July 1941 (JO, 16 August 1941). 20 AML, 5H10.20:  War Damages Service, ‘Obligations des sinistrés’ (undated); law of 13 May 1943; ADN, 1W.1290:  Secret Services Section (Lille) to Head of Secret Services (Vichy), 15 June 1943. 21 Law of 12 July 1941 (JO, 16 August 1941); AML, 5H10.12:  ‘Évacués, réfugiés. Voici ce que vous devez savoir’, brochure published by SIPEG during 1944 (undated), p. 14. 22 M. Schmiedel, ‘Les Allemands et la Défense passive en France:  le cas de Nantes’, in Battesti and Facon (eds.), Les Bombardements alliés sur la France, p. 50. 23 AMBB, 6H4: ‘Compte rendu succinct sur l’organisation de la Défense passive à la ville de Boulogne-Billancourt au moment des événements du 3 mars 1942’, 11 March 1942; ‘Rapport au sujet d’améliorations à apporter à la Défense passive à Boulogne-Billancourt’, 20 April 1942. 24 AMBB, 6H4: SALS was created by prefectorial circular of 30 March 1942 (Préfecture de la Seine, ‘Bombardements aériens – coordination des services de protection’, 11 May 1944). 25 M. Schmiedel, ‘Les Allemands et la Défense passive en France’, p. 52. 26 AMCB, 4H4.14:  President of the Chamber of Commerce to President of the Special Delegation of Brest, 30 January 1943, forwarded to Kreiskommandant (District Commander); President of the Special Delegation of Brest to Kreiskommandant, 11 February 1943. 27 AML, 5H3.4: Prefect of the Nord to all Sub-Prefects, 14 July 1940; AML, 5H3.4:  Note from Stadtkommissar (Town Commissioner) (Dengel), 30 July 1940. 28 AML, 5H3.6: Prefect of the Nord to Mayor of Lille, 16 January 1941. 29 AML, 5H3.4: Oberfeldkommandant (High Field Commander) to Mayor of Lille, 28 September 1940. 30 AML, 5H3.3:  Prefect of the Nord to all Sub-Prefects, mayors and presidents of special delegations, 4 February 1942. 31 AML, 5H3.3: Prefect of the Nord to Mayor of Lille, 25 December 1942. 32 AML, 5H3.6:  President of the Shopkeepers’ Union in the rue Léon Gambetta (Louis Legrand) to Mayor of Lille, 5 August 1944. 33 AMBB, 6H7:  Head of of Engineering for the Paris Metro to Permanent Secretary-General of Défense Passive in Boulogne-Billancourt (Perrier), 8 May 1942. 34 AMBB, 6H7: Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to Prefect of the Seine, petition from local people demanding use of Billancourt Metro station, 15 April 1942; poster from Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to population, 5 June 1942.

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Experiencing bombing 35 AMBB, 6H7: Director General of the Paris Metro (Martin) to Permanent Secretary-General of Défense Passive in Boulogne-Billancourt (Perrier), 29 September 1943. 36 AMCB, 4H4.14: Mayor of Brest to Mayor of Lorient, 1 August 1941; Mayor of Lorient to Mayor of Brest, 6 August 1941. 37 AMCB, 4H4.14:  Ouest-Éclair, 16 June 1942; La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 10 August 1942; La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 2 October 1942; Ouest-Éclair, 24 November 1942; Ouest-Éclair, 1 February 1943. 38 AML, 5H10.12:  ‘Évacués, réfugiés. Voici ce que vous devez savoir’, brochure published by SIPEG during 1944 (undated). 39 AML, 5H3.19: ‘Exécution de la note du 7 avril 1942’, 30 April 1942. 40 AMBB, 6H81:  Prefect of the Seine to Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, 6 November 1942. 41 AMBB, 6H19:  Prefect of the Seine to Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, 18 September 1943. Out of 327 people killed in Boulogne-Billancourt, fifty-two were children  – fewer, in fact, than the sixty-six killed in March 1942 (AMBB, 6H72:  ‘Réponse aux renseignements demandés par Melle Levenez […] sur les bombardements subis par la Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 26 January 1945). 42 AMCB, 4H4.36: L’Ouest-Éclair, 9 September 1941; La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 22 January 1942. Thirty-four little boys left for Château-du-Loir on 21 January; 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 12 February 1943; Mayor of Brest to M. l’abbé de Petitcorps, 4 October 1963.

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v 6 v

In the aftermath

Sonia Agache: And afterwards, when the raid had finished, we climbed back out [of the trench shelter], and I seem to remember that I gave my arm to my teacher to lean on. She wasn’t very tall. So I gave my arm to her. I feel like I can still picture her now – think about it, such a long time ago! – a little lady, with greyish hair. Yes. And, coming out of the trenches, debris everywhere, tree branches and everything, and just in front of me, my father was there! Because my father, he’d been working on – he was a roofer, and he was doing some repairs to the roof of a brewery, not far away. And when he saw where the bombs were falling, he said to himself ‘That’s next to the school!’ And what did he do? He got on his bike, and he came straight here – and when I saw him, I burst into tears. It’s like I can see him again now! He had stripy trousers – they were fashionable in those days – and a jacket of black ratine, and he had his bike. And when I  saw him, I  shouted ‘Papa!’ And I cried, I cried. And he said ‘It was nothing, you’re still here! Come on, let’s go home and see how the others are.’ And so we left. He put me on his bike frame, and wanted to ride, but there was so much – the glass, all of that, in the street, all the broken tiles and everything, he had to – he couldn’t ride anymore, so we walked back home. And when we got home there was my brother and my mother – and then, oh! The house was wrecked! No, the roof and the windows were still there, but all the walls inside had collapsed! So it was, and so we had to move house because you couldn’t live in it anymore.

The primary school that ten-year-old Sonia Agache attended in Hellemmes had inadequate trench-shelter provision for its pupils. The child helped the adult out of the battered shelter – a gesture suggesting Sonia’s scarce comprehension of what her teacher knew they could be facing. Yet it was in confronting her anxious father outside the shelter that the emotional dam burst and the tears of delayed fear and relief flowed. Her father was concerned to make his way home, to locate his five other children and his wife. Sonia’s description hints, through the v 119 v

Experiencing bombing bike’s impeded progress, at the streetscape, roads and pavements blocked by debris. Bombs do strange things:  the outside of the family home remained intact while the innards were destroyed. In the aftermath of bombing, Sonia, like so many others, greeted a new world where all the familiar places of childhood had gone. The chaos that followed an air raid was an integral part of the event. The severity of a bombing campaign is often measured by the number of casualties, by contemporaries and historians. Civilian deaths are of course important, but so are those survivors who emerged from shelters, blinking in the dust. Target installations – factories, railway depots, and so on – were surrounded by the communities whose members worked in them. Home and family were at the centre of children’s worlds, and journeys across bombed towns to find them were nailed to adult memories of the aftermath. Children also encountered death – first-, second- and third-hand – in the wake of air raids; these were public, violent deaths, that contributed to juvenile understanding of war and bombing. War drew the public and private realms together, but wedged between state and citizen was community. Assistance in the aftermath of an air raid at community level may partially explain why bombing is anchored in local, rather than national, memory.

Local destruction: scale and confrontation Following the Renault raid of 3 March 1942 on Boulogne-Billancourt, it was reported to the British government’s Air Ministry that There is no question from the reports and subsequent photographs that the attack was completely successful and that the bombs were focused almost entirely on the area of the works with comparatively small proportionate civilian damage in the surrounding residential areas.1

The bombs had indeed destroyed nineteen of the Renault plant’s buildings and more than 700 machine tools, left 600 seriously damaged, and affected 2,000 others. However, that still left 89 per cent of the buildings unscathed and 79 per cent of machine tools intact.2 This is not to suggest that Allied raids did not damage their targets:  by August 1941, the German warships Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Hipper, docked in Brest, were ‘immobilised’.3 Renault lost five months’ production following 3 March 1942 and six months’ after 4 April 1943.4 The latter raid also damaged the Salmson factory, SNCAC, Glacières de Paris, Kellner, Niepce, Waroguet and Paz et Silva, all industrial works and local employers.5 The raid on Lille-Délivrance of 10 April 1944 wrecked the station and its v 120 v

In the aftermath yards, tracks, rolling stock and workshops, and textile factories Laurent, Delsalle-Desandt, Nicolle, Mourmant, Thiriez and Fremau were damaged or destroyed, plus Delannoy’s Garage, the Dion and Vandeure factories, the Danel printers, Mory’s factory, the oil refinery Huileries du Nord, and the Kuhlman and Novo chemical plants. The raid of 10/11 May 1944 on Fives and Hellemmes destroyed locomotive sheds and important stretches of track, as well as the mechanics, carpentry, roofing and painting workshops and the offices of the Usine de Fives, plus the roofer Meunier, the Boutry textiles factory, the Autier copper foundry, the metal factory Nicodeme, furniture manufacturer Ebénord, Wynckier’s electrical plant and the Tudor works in South Lille.6 These raids are only two of many; the number of industrial installations they affected, all big employers, created enormous difficulties. Actions against factories exploited or exploitable by the Germans had far-reaching consequences in civilian lives; Bomber Command’s report on the raid stating ‘comparatively small proportionate civilian damage’ is inaccurate: heavy raids devastated local communities. Schools were frequently struck during air raids, with direct consequences for children. The raid of 6 December 1942 in Lille completely destroyed one school and damaged five others; on 10 April 1944, seventeen schools were damaged. Other community resources suffered too. By July 1941, Brest’s civilian hospice and maternity hospital were out of action.7 Commercial centres were ripped apart, damaging business and hampering the purchase of scarce necessities. By June 1942, bombing had forced the closure of seven bakeries, two grocers, two wood and coal merchants, two butchers and one greengrocer in Brest’s town centre.8 Communications were also affected as telephone wires came down; the raid of 10 May 1944 in Hellemmes also destroyed the post office. Debris hampered traffic circulation. Around thirty-five streets in Boulogne-Billancourt needed repairs following the 1942 raid, which also destroyed 107 electric streetlights and fifty gas lamps.9 Important civic buildings became unusable. The central police station in Lille was damaged on 10 May 1944 and in Brest, the community centre and the remand home were struck during early bombing campaigns.10 On 10 April 1944, bombs fell on the prison in Loos near Lille and around 200 prisoners escaped.11 Repairs to municipal property in Boulogne-Billancourt were estimated at 9.6  million francs in 1942.12 The scale of destruction was enormous, from park benches to letter boxes, recreation grounds to garages. Daily life inevitably became more complicated. What was it like to emerge from a bomb shelter and confront the world made horribly unfamiliar? As the previous chapter suggested, the v 121 v

Experiencing bombing

Figure  3  Interviewee Danielle Durville lived here in the rue François Garnier in Boulogne-Billancourt, until the building was destroyed in the air raid of 3 March 1942. moment of bombing was remembered most clearly as sound; vivid visual memories, however, dominate the aftermath. Danielle Durville, a toddler in Boulogne-Billancourt in March 1942, could remember nothing of the air raid, but said of the aftermath:  ‘I have this memory, it’s just a flash really, of seeing all these ruins, where it was smoking, where people were shouting, and Mum was holding me tight.’ Her first memory crystallised the key elements of the aftermath: destruction, distress, protection. Fire was a striking image. ‘Flames everywhere!’ greeted Pierre Haigneré in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance, and Michel Thomas remembered ‘the factory all ablaze […] a sort of flaming horizon’ in Boulogne-Billancourt. At a distance, the scenes were impressive; close up, the devastation was alarming, particularly for very small children with fewer experiential resources to interpret what they saw. Thérèse Leclercq was distressed by the state of her ruined classroom in Hellemmes: The key image for me is chaos. Everything overturned, the windowpanes smashed, tables, chairs, everything was topsy-turvy. All our books, all the papers on the floor. I can see it clearly, I can see the classrooms; I could walk it again today. We found ourselves in total chaos.

v 122 v

In the aftermath The five-year-old’s shock was created by the disordered world, and her memory of it was only visual. Ignorance was no protection here; indeed, it multiplied the alarming impact. She gave no explanation or interpretation. What the little girl saw was incomprehensible. Pulverised plaster coated everything as it slowly fell to earth. Henri Girardin, near Brest, said that ‘the entire street was completely covered in dust’. It carpeted the ground and hung in the air, ghostly and opaque, ‘like a fog’, said Christian de la Bachellerie (Boulogne-Billancourt). Visibility was poor because of dust and acrid smoke and, as Jean Pochart found as he crossed Brest, ‘there was no light whatsoever […] everywhere was in total darkness’. Eerie noises were heard:  ‘police cars, firemen, ambulances, di-ding di-ding di-ding’, remembered Bernard Bauwens (Boulogne-Billancourt). Unfamiliar sights and sounds were joined by strange sensations. Michel and Claude Thomas walked Boulogne-Billancourt’s streets in their slippers: Michel: There was broken glass everywhere on the ground – Claude: Oh yes, we were walking in dust and broken glass, we walked on the glass, a layer of dust, glass on the ground.

Repetition marks out a vivid tactile sensation for unprotected feet. Jean Pochart too felt strange things underfoot in the dark as the pavement in Brest was ‘strewn with shards, you walked along and crunch, crunch, crunch’. Pierre Haigneré, emerging from his damaged home in the Délivrance railway workers’ housing estate, was surprised to ‘feel that my feet were sticking to the ground. I was struggling to walk, and I couldn’t understand why.’ He realised that bombs falling in back-gardens had had a strange effect: ‘the soil had been blasted upwards and came down on the streets, the pathways’. While the all-clear was a relief, it was a strange world into which survivors stepped.

Finding home and family In the aftermath of a raid in Brest, Serge Aubrée said he had one preoccupation:  ‘to see where my grandmother was’. Dazed survivors set off through the rubble to seek home and family, surrounded by chaotic sights that cranked up anxiety on the way. Led home by her mother, Thérèse Leclercq in Hellemmes recalled that ‘it looked like a wasteland from the school to my house. Everything was destroyed, the walls were destroyed, trees were lying on the ground, electric cables hung down, and v 123 v

Experiencing bombing the telephone wires, everything, everything, everything!’ Chaos, as in her classroom, dominated. Christian de la Bachellerie, hurrying home, barely recalls the journey across Boulogne-Billancourt: ‘When you’re worried about someone, you get a move on, and you don’t look around much.’ Anxiety increased as he approached home: ‘you’re dreading what you’re going to find’. An older teenager, Christian could anticipate the possibilities that could have befallen his family, while the small child Thérèse’s memories are more visual snapshots of the moment. It was one thing to discover home still standing, but another to find it wholly intact. Blast forced its way into the Thomas brothers’ flat in Boulogne-Billancourt like a burglar, snapping window latches and smashing windows. In Lille, Bernard Lemaire mentioned a detail that struck at the heart of domestic vulnerability: ‘there was shattered glass all over the bed’: military aggression thus entered the most intimate part of the home. Other damage was structural. At Michel and Claude’s flat, ‘part of the ceiling had fallen in’, and as we know, at the interior walls were down at Sonia Agache’s home. Édith Denhez’s mother had evacuated three of her children in a hurry – the eldest, Jacques, was still missing. Her father later returned to Cambrai for their belongings: He went all the way down the rue de Solesmes, and when he arrived at the bottom, he said ‘Well, I never! What on Earth? I’ve missed the house!’ So he went back up the rue de Solesmes, and there was just an enormous crater. The house was gone. And so we lost everything. Everything, everything, everything.

Finding the crater where home once stood is a memory passed on to Édith by her father. It is crucial for the family’s history, for it marked the beginning of a long period of poverty. Their belongings were gone, their bereaved mother was depressed, and the children went to school in ragged clothes. Bomb damage endured long after the dust had settled. Yet for those who escaped unscathed, the wreckage could also be fascinating. Christian Solet said that following the 3 March raid on Boulogne-Billancourt, ‘we went to have a look’. Andréa Cousteaux in Brest had a similar interest in this new kind of local ‘tourism’: ‘On Sundays we’d go and have a look where they’d fallen, a look at the ruins – it was a bit of a stroll, eh!’ But not everyone shared her interest. Cécile Bramé in Brest described the monotony of the ruined landscape. Walking through once familiar streets, she now only saw ‘destroyed houses, destroyed houses. You went along the streets, and saw another one was down, and another.’ Lucien Agache’s depiction of the area around the Usine de Fives v 124 v

In the aftermath illustrated too this stunned disbelief. He said ‘it was just a field of ruins. The whole neighbourhood was completely destroyed. We walked for months and months in those ruins.’ Everything that had been familiar had gone, and stayed gone for lack of resources. Josette Dutilleul in the same district said of the place where she grew up, ‘you couldn’t recognise it anymore’. Children knew every lamp post, tree, slope and drain in the streets that made up their urban playgrounds. Near Lille-Délivrance, Pierre Haigneré expressed this sense of loss: ‘It was something unreal. You said to yourself: “It’s not the same place anymore.” ’ Bombing destroyed the landmarks of the communities in which children’s daily lives were based; in these districts, the local experience was shared, neighbours witnessing scenes together and struggling with the same obstacles. But the desperation to find family, feelings of loss and emotional responses to sensory experiences spanned localities. Blast blew walls off apartment blocks, violating the privacy of the domestic interior. Such homes were striking visions in the aftermath of bombing. Pierre Haigneré said of his neighbours’ houses, ‘you could see gaping holes, a collapse, the rooftops fallen into the rafters’. Houses, reduced to skeletons, were no longer homes. Yves Le Roy was curious: ‘On the outside, the front door – but there was nothing inside! All the floors had fallen in, into the cellar. Everything had fallen in, but the façade was still there.’ One could peer overtly into private spaces. Walking across Brest, Jean Pochart found the sight compelling: Sometimes you could see great big holes in the walls, you could peer into people’s private worlds, you saw their carpets and said ‘Oh, look, they’ve got one of those carpets’, colourful. You could see right into people’s homes. It wasn’t private anymore because everything was wide open.

His memory does not suggest any prudishness; he did not feel that he should look away. He was fascinated by the exposed detail of other lives. This was not a home any more. It had become part of the spectacle.

Encounters with death Bombing damaged the human body just as it damaged buildings. Parental censorship aimed partly at shielding children from such sights. After the March 1942 Renault raid, eighteen people were found dead in the streets; similarly, after the 4 April raid, the police wrote of human remains ‘collected in the streets’.13 Official reports commented on the ‘dreadfully mutilated’ bodies of the dead. Unidentified body parts were v 125 v

Experiencing bombing meticulously recorded: ‘Woman’s head about 40 years old grey hair black eyebrows blue eyes 110, rue de Silly in Boulogne.’14 Death was violent, public and on such a scale that local authorities struggled to house the bodies. Makeshift morgues were set up across Lomme in April 1944 at the fire station, a brewery, two schools, the community centre, youth club and a garage.15 Thus place of learning, work, play and leisure were transformed into sites of grief. In the aftermath of bombing, death was hard to avoid – whether strangers, acquaintances, friends or family – pushing back the boundaries of children’s knowledge. Death moved from the privacy of the home into the public eye. Children too were brought out of the domestic realm by war. The two met in the streets. In Paris in April 1944, Max Potter, who later became a doctor, said that he ‘saw the bodies lined up on the pavement. That’s where I saw my first cadaver, rue Duhesme, with the head sticking out. I  was fifteen and a half. It made a big impression on me.’ Other children heard stories that troubled them. Unknown to each other, Bernard Lemaire and Jean Caniot both recounted the story of local schoolgirls in Lille playing basketball in the playground: ‘a plane flew over during the day, and nobody knows why, boom, it dropped a bomb, and the girls were all killed’. The story resonated as the girls were of a similar age to them – indeed, so random was the tragedy that it could so easily have been them. The shared possibility of death made the anecdote meaningful. Sonia Agache knew the violence of the bombs from her fifteen-year-old brother. Her father and brother had gone to help after the raid of 10 May 1944 in Hellemmes. Her brother returned shaken, and transmitted his anguish to his sister: ‘He said, “My God! There was this airman’s leg…” And as he told us that, he was sick. We understood a bit.’ Sonia’s sisterly empathy was enough to lodge his memory in her mind thereafter. André Dutilleul witnessed the same scenes first-hand: First of all, coming out of the quarry tunnels, bits of plane scattered everywhere across the fields  – you nearly ran into them  – there was an airman who was across the – well there, there were bodies everywhere, airmen who – in our garden, there was a dead airman – well that –! Psh!

André struggled to describe the traumatic scenes, which he said affected him more than his own near-misses. Viewing death left as deep a scar as surviving an air raid; smashed up bodies showed the triumph of war and suffering, while survival was simply good, capricious luck. The death of acquaintances suggested new possibilities: it was someone I know, it could be someone I love, it could be me. Jean Pochart spoke v 126 v

In the aftermath of the meaning he attached to a neighbour’s death. He said, ‘that was the first time I knew someone well who died. It was a bit of an awakening. This war was dangerous.’ Death had moved closer to home. The troubling impact of people being killed by bombing left its mark even into adulthood. Andréa Cousteaux told a comical story of an old skeleton, its tomb blasted from a cemetery in Brest as bombs fell nearby, later found by roofers: Well, the corpse that was in that tomb, they found him on roof of the house across the road! [Laughing] It was an old corpse [acting the part, arms outstretched], ‘Urrrr, urrrrr!’ And as the roof had been damaged, there were some roofers, some workmen who went up to fix it, and they found the corpse with its arms outstretched in a cross!

This tale foreshadowed a tragic parallel later in Andréa’s narrative. An acquaintance had hurried home from the communal laundry at the start of an air raid, on the advice of Andréa’s mother, to collect her sleeping baby son: She left, the poor thing. She just had time to take the little one in her arms, and the bomb fell on the house. They found her body stuck up, squashed like that [arms outstretched in a cross] onto the house across the road.

The death of the young mother mirrored the undignified flight of the old corpse, landing as though crucified, and later discovered. The stories formed part of Andréa’s armoury of comic, tragic and heroic tales that helped her come to terms with these disturbing incidents of her childhood. Such anecdotes were common among the narrators. Each one is a crystallisation of fears, communicated through a telling story. Bernard Bauwens was an only child whose father had died. When the 3 March 1942 air raid happened, he was apart from his mother who was working an evening shift at Renault. He recounted to me a friend’s experience that night which hinted at the outcome he dreaded. Bernard’s friend and the boy’s little sister had sheltered in their cellar with their mother during the air raid. Their father had stubbornly remained in the flat. The raid burst a nearby water tower: All of its water flooded into their cellar. There was a hole. And the water flooded the cellar, they couldn’t do anything about it. He managed to pass his sister out through the hole, and afterwards, he managed to squeeze out too. But the person behind him was too fat and couldn’t get through the hole. His mother, who was there too, she died. His father died in the flat.

v 127 v

Experiencing bombing Anecdotes may be wholly truthful, bits of hearsay, or compilations of parts of stories, but they are always told for a reason: they encapsulate meaning. Bernard’s fear of becoming an orphan is evident in this tale of other people’s deaths. The children’s mother died in front of them, and they were powerless to save her. The deaths of his friends during the air raid on Boulogne-Billancourt of April 1943 also had direct personal relevance to Robert Belleuvre, in his story of survival through luck, fate and decision-making. On his way to the Petit Jaurès cinema, Robert bumped into three school friends: They were going to the other cinema. ‘Are you coming, Robert? We’re off to the Rond-point.’ ‘Oh’, I said, ‘No. I’m going this way.’ ‘No, come on! Come with us!’ I hesitated. Then I said ‘No, I’m not going to come with you.’

Just as Robert reached the Petit Jaurès alone, the raid began. He hurried home and on reaching the corner of rue de Silly where he lived he saw a building collapse. It was the apartment block with Rouleau’s bakery on the ground floor: I found out straight away that the baker and his daughter had been killed. But what I didn’t know was that the three friends I had met, they’d also been killed. They were also buried under that building there. If I’d listened to them, I’d have been the fourth death.

Robert’s grief at losing three friends is accompanied by a contradictory feeling of relief – even guilt – that he made the right decision. The importance of near-miss stories is clear from the frequency with which they are told. Such stories – as with Serge Aubrée’s and André Dutilleul’s choice of shelters, in Chapter 4 – often hinge upon the protagonist flexing his or her agency and seeming to make the right decision. In such stories, the perception – if maybe not the reality – is that death arrives by unlucky chance, but survival is down to personal decision-making, allowing sense to be made of good and bad fortune within troubling memories. For Édith Denhez, however, the death of her older brother Jacques dominated the interview, even when not directly under discussion. What came before led inevitably to it; what came after was its inevitable consequence. As we know, Édith’s mother took her three youngest children to Aunt Lucie’s after the first raid on Cambrai. When Jacques’ body was dug out of the cellar of a collapsed building, his fingertips were bloodied from scrabbling to dig himself out: he had been buried alive. Not only had Jacques been trying to make his way to freedom when the cellar collapsed, but, it transpired, he had not even intended to shelter there: v 128 v

In the aftermath At the moment that the air raid happened, Jacques was actually on his way home. He had gone into a cemetery to shelter, but a lady who saw him there said ‘No, no, no! Don’t stay here, it’s too dangerous! Go to the butcher’s, into the cellar.’

We do not know how Édith knew these details, but it seemed to her that Jacques made the right decision and bad luck had thwarted him. The details of Jacques’ death were unknown to Édith at the time, but the news of his damaged fingers and the turning point in the graveyard have haunted her in adulthood. Her mother, broken by grief and loss, did not seek compensation. This death had far-reaching consequences for the family and brought Édith closer to her sister and distanced her from her mother. Its continuing impact was clear even in the interview as her husband Jean asked, for the first time, questions about this cloud hanging over his wife’s family.

Rescue and clearance in the aftermath Victims of bombing received assistance from various organisations in its aftermath. The state’s evolving financial response was examined in Chapter 5, and I will later consider the work of the national charity, the Secours National, and that of the Comité Ouvrier de Secours Immédiat (COSI, Workers’ Emergency Relief Committee). Here, however, my interest lies with rescue and clearance. What were the immediate tasks facing local authorities in the aftermath of bombing, and how did the community help itself? And what role did young people – adolescents – play in all of this? The damage air raids caused to urban structures was immense. The tasks facing the Défense Passive were multiple: engineers and local fire services required manpower and machinery for lifting, digging and demolishing, and vehicles to transport debris, possessions, the injured and the dead. Survivors were rescued as a priority, then streets were cleared to provide vehicular access and to permit the reconnection of utilities. Unstable buildings were made safe, either shored up or pulled down. The contents of homes were retrieved, and people and their belongings evacuated. All salvageable materials were kept. Collecting the belongings of sinistrés (bombed-out people) was last on the list, but these were to be treated with great care: everything was meticulously recorded and stored under guard.16 Following the March 1942 Renault raid, workers loaded one hundred lorries with furniture, gathered eighty tons of bedding, and seven million francs-worth of money and jewellery.17 It was a vast job. v 129 v

Experiencing bombing Clearance took place across Boulogne-Billancourt on eighty-four sites, and employed 2,500 workers. It finished on 1 April 1943. Three days later, the second air raid created another eighty-nine bombsites.18 Clearance was hazardous work, as buildings crumbled and unexploded bombs went off.19 Social workers and student volunteers were involved, visiting families to make assessments for the attribution of a carte provisoire de sinistré (provisional bombed-out card) that entitled the bearer to obtain emergency rations and cash.20 Medals and certificates of honour were awarded to rescue workers ‘distinguished by their bravery, their devotion and their sense of duty’.21 Mayors received letters calling for the recognition of members of the public for courageous acts. Wartime France is sometimes characterised as a place where neighbourliness was trampled underfoot in the competition for scarce resources. Yet here we see a limit to this characterisation. While there were examples of anti-social behaviour, bombsite thefts, and fraudulent relief claims, a type of ‘Blitz spirit’ developed. Communities appear to have been bound tightly together in the aftermath of bombing. Indeed, immediate help came from neighbours, not organisations. Speed was imperative to save lives and secure buildings, and firemen were often delayed in rubble-blocked streets. After the Lille-Délivrance raid in April 1944, Pierre Haigneré noted that first on the scene were ‘the neighbours. The emergency services arrived a lot later.’ Even when official services arrived, they struggled to cope:  ‘the poor old firemen,’ said Christian de la Bachellerie in Boulogne-Billancourt, ‘there weren’t hundreds of them!’ Neighbours helped pull survivors from the wreckage ‘practically by hand’, as lifting devices were lacking. The aftermath was characterised by insufficient personnel, insufficient equipment, but plenty of willing neighbours. Christian added, ‘everyone helped out’. He emphasised the strength of local participation; volunteers were not requisitioned or affiliated to official organisations. In the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance, Pierre Haigneré put active local support down to ‘strong professional solidarity’. André Dutilleul (Hellemmes) ascribed it to a more general sense of shared experience: ‘People immediately understand when there is such a dreadful situation.’ Josette Dutilleul’s brother and father played their part in this community solidarity in Hellemmes, and described their participation as entr’aide (mutual aid), rather than duty or service. The capricious nature of where bombs fell created mutual insecurity. It made sense, therefore, that rescue work was shared:  next time, the rescuer could need saving. Although Vichy tried to harness this mood of entr’aide v 130 v

In the aftermath to its communitarian project, treating it as evidence of successful moral renewal, it seems unlikely that community reaction to local disaster was underpinned by the ideology of the National Revolution. Not only did Vichy wish to harness bombing to its communitarian project, but it hoped that the services of adolescents would contribute to its goal of reshaping French society. From fourteen years old, young people were therefore not just observers of bombing, or its victims, but were active participants in the aftermath. Drawing on the rhetoric of duty and sacrifice, Vichy’s Secrétariat Général de la Jeunesse (General Secretary for Youth) set up the Équipes nationales (National Teams) around the middle of 1942, organising young volunteers on the Occupied Zone’s bombsites.22 The Équipes’ initial mission was ‘civil protection against the events of war’.23 Their members were aged between fourteen and twenty-five years old. The groups were initially voluntary and later compulsory for all those over eighteen not otherwise engaged in war work.24 Their creation was part of Pierre Laval’s attempt to impose coordination on relief work, aiming at a full-scale national organisation formed out of what had been local, albeit government-encouraged, initiatives.25 Recruitment varied:  Marseille had more than 2,000 équipiers, while between them, Rennes, Fougères and Saint-Mâlo could only muster 1,700; there were 30,000 équipiers nationwide.26 Providing precious support to the public authorities, they earned the mistrust of the Germans for their staunch patriotism.27 Équipiers were allocated tasks depending on age. The youngest boys provided information to bewildered sinistrés, worked in canteens, and girls ran crèches. Older male équipiers worked on bombsites, and females assisted social workers. Young men over seventeen years old cleared rubble, acted as stretcher-bearers and helped firemen. Both sexes aged fifteen and over were deployed as first aiders, exposed to blast injuries, and boys guarded bombed-out homes. The youngest équipiers performed the vigils in makeshift morgues, while older boys bore coffins.28 Yet the Équipes nationales never established a monopoly over young volunteers, suggesting more failure for Vichy’s attempts to impose control on the bombsites.29 The Prefect of the Seine warmly praised young people’s work in March 1942. About 1,000 young people arrived each day after 3 March, from ‘diverse youth groups’, including the Jeunes du Maréchal, Centres de Jeunesse, Moniteurs de Bagatelle et de Murville and the Croix Rouge des Jeunes. He wrote that their conduct was proof that that they were ‘imbued with the spirit of French solidarity and animated by the enthusiastic desire to serve under Marshal Pétain’s banner’.30 But as already noted, community entr’aide was strong anyway and Vichy’s v 131 v

Experiencing bombing rhetoric was layered on top of behaviour inspired by circumstance rather than ideology. Furthermore, young people did not invariably conduct themselves so favourably. A complaint reached Lille’s mayor from local people working on clearance about arrogant young rescue workers who, ‘so proud of wearing their helmets, consider the destruction of a building as a bit of a lark’.31 Afflicted by the malaise running through Lille’s Défense Passive, these young people appeared to bombed-out residents to be careless and inconsiderate. Robert Belleuvre’s apprenticeship affiliated him to a youth centre in Billancourt. He performed different tasks after an air raid: We were requisitioned to sweep up, to help people, and to carry the coffins to the hearses for the funerals. We were also required to take part in the national mourning ceremonies.

He was critical of how young people were treated. They cleared rubble ‘by hand! We didn’t have shovels.’ Carrying coffins was the worst part, an emotional rather than practical challenge. The boys were indignant: ‘We said, “they make us do this – at our age!” ’ He was not yet fifteen. Robert remained angry, and was particularly distressed that he had to carry the coffin of a friend during the funeral ceremony. He had not accompanied his friends to the Rond-point cinema, but ‘I accompanied them to the communal grave’, he told me sadly. Standing guard while mutilated bodies were identified by distraught relatives was a far cry from the fresh air and exercise on which Vichy hoped its youth would grow healthy and strong. Although only fifteen, Bernard Bauwens, also in Boulogne-Billancourt, was put to work sorting the body parts collected after an air raid: Everything, everything, everything that was here – smashed. To clear it up. Do you understand? It was awful. There were firemen there. They picked it up with spades, the bits. They put it in – what, in bins. You didn’t have plastic bins in those days, they were steel bins. And we took the – and they were there, and the rue Paul Bert was there, and we were there with a truck. And we put the – they brought the things to us there, and we put it in. We put it in, but before, we had to put it in the coffins. The coffins were there inside. We put the – with spades.

His halting description indicates the traumatic constriction he encountered describing this work. He then angrily spat out the word ‘barbaque’ – a slang term for meat – and recalled the scenes: Incredible. It was abuse really. Can you believe they made us do that? Fifteen years old! Picking up meat with soil? No, it’s dreadful. It’s awful. Horrible,

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In the aftermath horrible. Why did they treat us kids like that? There were loads of blokes hanging around doing nothing! No. We were too young for that.

Bernard’s experience contradicts official images of enthusiastic teams of young people, won to the National Revolution and desirous to serve the Marshal. By praising the youth teams, the allocation of teenagers – essential ‘man’ power, although many were still children – to such work could be continued. While ‘duty’ and ‘service’ were evoked as motivating factors for community aid, it seems more likely that compassion, solidarity, family and friendship played the dominant role. In some cases, as with these teenage boys, it came down to compulsion; straddling the child and adult worlds, these boys were assigned adult work but retained a limited agency. Such limitation was partly a consequence of their subordinate position to the adults controlling their activity, and partly derived from their status – like that of many adults – of requisitioned workers in an authoritarian state. In the aftermath of an air raid, domestic and community life was shattered. The haphazard nature of where bombs fell played an important role. While it was more likely that workers’ housing would be closer to industrial targets, all parts of the urban structure could be hit, affecting all sorts of people. This democratic face of bombing’s destruction created a shared peril that made the aftermath so fraught with anxiety as people rushed home through dust-filled streets. It also gave rise to spontaneous local solidarity. Vichy’s attempts to harness the spirit of entr’aide to the National Revolution did not appear to have been successful, as personal priorities motivated responses. As at the moment of bombing, in the aftermath individuals took comfort in the community group, which derived strength from its shared experience of acute threat and crisis. While the specificities of the threat, crisis and response differed locally, the experience of community solidarity was common across Brest, Boulogne-Billancourt and Lille. Chaotic scenes in the aftermath were as disturbing for children as they were fascinating. Pierre Haigneré said that as he emerged from his home in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near to Lille, he was confronted by a scene that was for a child ‘an incomprehensible image’. Such scenes upset the certainties of understanding: if home and school were not safe, where was? Yet children learnt more about the nature of bombing in its aftermath. The scenes they now witnessed gave meaning to the whistles and booms. This new understanding sometimes prompted older children to act, as they set off through the rubble, determined to v 133 v

Experiencing bombing find their families. However, younger children such as Thérèse Leclercq, led off dazed by her mother, could not envisage a course of independent action. In the aftermath of bombing, children were, as Pierre Haigneré continued, ‘directly in contact with death, with violence’. Haunting knowledge of destruction and death – exposure to which, in sight or story, was common – inhabits the memories of those who lived through the bombing as children. Children witnessed death, which gave them a deeper understanding of bombing and, more broadly, war. These were not simply shocking sensations – loud noises, tremors – but their meaning had developed: they posed a mortal threat to the self and to those people that children depended on. The private realm of home and family, the key loci of the child’s world, were under threat from public war.

Notes 1 TNA, AIR 19/217: Baker to Sinclair, 5 March 1942. 2 Hatry, ‘Billancourt sous les bombes’, p. 252. 3 Richards, Royal Air Force, pp. 360–1. 4 Hatry, ‘Billancourt sous les bombes’, p. 253. 5 AMBB, 6H77: ‘Boulogne-Billancourt: bombardement du dimanche 4 avril 1943: situation du 1er mai 1943.’ 6 AML, 5H10.3: Chief Superintendant of Police to Head of Défense Passive in Greater Lille, 11 May 1944. 7 AMCB, 4H4.27: ‘État numérique des immeubles détruits et endommagés depuis juillet 1940’, 23 July 1941. 8 AMCB, 4H4.27:  Secretary-General of Défense Passive in Brest to Sub-Prefect of Brest, 4 June 1942. 9 AMBB, 6H77: ‘Bombardements aériens des 3 mars 1942 – 4 avril – 3 & 15 septembre 1943: déblaiement’, November 1943. 10 AMCB, 4H4.27: ‘État numérique des immeubles détruits et endommagés depuis juillet 1940’, 23 July 1941. 11 Detrez and Chatelle, Tragédies en Flandres, p. 246. 12 AMBB, 6H76: ‘Rapport du Chef du Service d’Architecture sur l’importance des dommages causés aux Propriétés et Immeubles Communaux’, 14 March 1942. 13 AMBB, 6H72:  ‘Bombardement par avions effectué le 3 mars 1942’, 15 February 1943. 14 AMBB, 6H77: ‘Boulogne-Billancourt: bombardement du dimanche 4 avril 1943: situation du 1er mai 1943’, 1 May 1943. 15 AML, 5H10.3: Chief Superintendant of Police to Head of Défense Passive in Greater Lille, 11 April 1944.

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In the aftermath 16 AMBB, 6H4: Prefect of the Seine to Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, ‘Aide aux Localités Sinistrées Coordination’, 20 September 1943. 17 AMBB, 6H72, ‘Bombardement par avions effectué le 3 mars 1942’, 15 February 1943. 18 AMBB, 6H77: ‘Bombardements aériens des 3 mars 1942 – 4 avril – 3 & 15 septembre 1943’, November 1943. 19 It was estimated that after 3 March 1942 that 200 bombs lay unexploded (AMBB, 6H72, ‘Bombardement par avions effectué le 3 mars 1942’, 15 February 1943). 20 AMBB, 6H4: Prefect of the Seine to Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, ‘Aide aux Localités Sinistrées Coordination’, 20 September 1943. 21 AMCB, 4H4.1: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 21 October 1943. 22 Halls, Youth of Vichy France, pp.  344–5; L.  Yagil, ‘L’homme nouveau’ et la révolution nationale de Vichy, 1940–44 (Villeneuve d’Ascq:  Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1997), p.  87; Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p. 350. 23 ADIV (Archives Départementales d’Ille et Vilaine), 47W.6: Pierre Laval to prefects and departmental youth delegates, 17 June 1943. 24 Halls, Youth of Vichy France, pp. 344–5. 25 In May 1943, the SGJ was told to coordinate all youth activity towards the sinistrés (ADIV, 47W.6: Inspector of the Équipes nationales (Rabaud), to all Regional Youth Delegates, 25 May 1943). 26 ADIV, 47W.6:  Departmental Head of the Équipes Nationales (Laine) to Departmental Director of the Défense Passive, 10 February 1944; AMM (Archives Municipales de Marseille), 29II.4:  text for book in ‘Nos villes dans la tourmente’ series, 14 August 1944. 27 Yagil, ‘L’homme nouveau’, pp. 87–95. 28 ADIV, 47W.6: Regional delegate leading the Équipes nationales to regional and departmental heads (circular 15), 15 April 1943. 29 AMBB, 6H4:  The ‘Consignes concernant les jeunes’, for example, in the Prefect of the Seine’s note on ‘Aide aux Localités Sinistrées Coordination’ refers simply to ‘jeunes’ (20 September 1943). 30 AMBB, 6H75: Prefect of the Seine, to Secretary of State for the Interior, 17 March 1942. 31 AML, 5H3.6:  President of the Shopkeepers’ Union in the rue Gambetta (Legrand) to Mayor of Lille, 5 August 1944.

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v v

The consequences of bombing

Yvette Chapalain: I’ve got some bad memories of those years, which still upset me a bit. It was just that we didn’t have any choice, but were sent away to these other schools where we weren’t made very welcome by the other children, the children who lived there. We were ‘the refugees’. We were sent to the centre of Finistère. Even though it was a Catholic school, eh! Us, ‘the refugees’. The children who lived there lived with their parents, lots of them farmers. And they were spoilt. They had good bread, pancakes, things like that. We had disgusting bread. We saw them, we saw them eating their good white bread, with us next to them. Ah, no. Oh là. […] I’m still very angry with those nuns because they were –, I don’t want to use bad words, but they really were something  –. They never intervened, never said to the other children ‘Share with your little friends’, no, no. Obviously they had enough to eat […] We didn’t find much affection there. No, no, frankly, no. We were imposed upon them. That’s it. We were in the way. Definitely.

The evacuation of children, mothers without jobs and elderly people was ordered from Brest in February 1943. It was becoming too difficult to protect civilians from increasingly heavy raids. Yvette Chapalain was thirteen. She was sent with her younger siblings in tow to board in central Finistère. Her narrative lingered on the emotional deprivation that this separation from home had entailed, and on her residual anger. Becoming an evacuee was just one consequence of bombing in children’s lives. Air raids created acute local crises and sparked large-scale population movement, pre-emptive and responsive, voluntary and compulsory. Mathieu Devigne has described the Second World War as ‘an experience of migration’ for multitudes of French people: not just during the 1940 exodus, but repeatedly across the war, civilians moved, were moved and moved on again.1 As people left bombed areas, a larger section of the population v 136 v

The consequences of bombing was drawn into the consequences of bombing: what kind of solidarity did evacuees and refugees find in unbombed towns and villages? Bombing could affect status in other ways too. In the wake of an air raid, a person could become a sinistré (a bombed-out person), a refugee or indeed an evacuee. These states were not mutually exclusive: a sinistré might then become a refugee elsewhere. And as families lost the power to determine their children’s futures, they were thrust into greater dependency on the state, and underwent a consequent loss of agency.

Disruptions to daily life No matter how hard the bombers tried, their bombs did not distinguish a factory from a school. And as damaged schools were closed, alternative solutions had to be found. Christian Solet from Boulogne-Billancourt and his classmates were moved to other premises ten kilometres away and alternated mornings and afternoons with local children there, halving Christian’s schooling. In Brest, most schools did not reopen in autumn 1941.2 At this point, the German authorities there refused to authorise the civilian evacuation of the town, so the mayor used school closure to encourage parents to send their children to safer locations. But such was parents’ reluctance to part with their children that schools were forced to reopen. However, they were closed for good from February 1943, this time on German orders.3 All of Boulogne-Billancourt’s schools were closed in September 1943.4 In Paris, Max Potter revelled in his freedom from April 1944: ‘I was on holiday for six months!’ Claude Thomas (Boulogne-Billancourt) attended six or seven different schools between 1939 and 1946. Of a sanguine disposition, he did not view these changes as damaging overall, saying ‘we worked normally. We adapted to it.’ It was different for others. Andréa Cousteaux (Brest) regretted the curtailment of her schooling: ‘I’d gone to secondary school. But not long after, they closed it. After that, everyone studied in whatever way they could. We didn’t take exams or anything.’ Her opportunity to acquire more education, and perhaps develop a career, was lost. But new schools also brought new opportunities. Having been refugees, Cécile Bramé’s family returned to Brest without her after the liberation. The headmistress of the school she had been attending recommended that she remain as a boarder. At first she was furious: ‘Oh, well, I was pretty fed up about that! But I tell you, now I say ‘Thank you, God!’ Because that decided my future. That’s how I  got into teaching.’ Cécile composed the upheavals wrought by v 137 v

Experiencing bombing bombing into a triumphant narrative, the first steps into a profession she loved, and which gave her some social mobility. Schools were only one part of communal life that suffered after bombing. Re-establishing water, electricity and gas was vital, and not just to rescue operations. Without the means to cook, stay warm and keep clean, civilians would be forced into dependence on the authorities, further straining local and national resources. Unable to continue working, economic activity would collapse, public health would suffer, and civil unrest could ensue. It is worth noting that cessations in water, gas and electricity supply scarcely registered in memories of childhood; when they did, none of the narrators could recall direct links to bombing. Public transport was central to economic life, and the Paris Metro was rapidly repaired following serious damage in Boulogne-Billancourt on 4 April 1943. From 9 April, trains were running and had been replaced by buses in between.5 But in poorer residential areas, citizens felt ignored as authorities focused on town centres. Inhabitants in working-class Lille-Moulins complained after the raid of 22 June 1944 that ‘many roads [are] still blocked by the debris’. A  feeble attempt by the authorities to remove rubble had been abandoned. A  month later, the district still looked as though it had just been bombed. Furthermore, the wreckage posed a health hazard as many people ‘are using this pile of rubble as a dump for their household waste […]. On top of that, children are always playing on this rubble and risk being injured by the broken glass there.’6 With little manpower and few materials, priority was given to centres of economic activity. Likewise in Brest bombed-out buildings were being used for various insalubrious purposes – rubbish tips, toilets, clandestine abattoirs – again putting children who played there at risk.7 Bombed-out towns became dirty and dangerous, and daily life, already complicated by shortages, became more difficult. But home was still home: people were reluctant to leave. In fact, many of the narrators emphasised that life carried on. Yvette Chapalain (Brest) remarked that, while her parents had to deal with difficulties, ‘my life went on much the same’. Habituation to air raids, the demands of daily life, and the requirements of school life folded the upheavals created by bombing into the messy reality of wartime childhood. As we have seen, some children showed resilience if they could stay in familiar – albeit changed – surroundings. It was different, however, when bombing forced families out of home and community. v 138 v

The consequences of bombing

Sinistrés Being bombed out and/or becoming a refugee or evacuee had evident consequences in family lives, yet were experienced differently by parents and children. As Jean Caniot from Lille said, ‘we didn’t really realise. We didn’t have a house – that belonged to our parents – we didn’t have a past, we didn’t really have many toys.’ Possessions and memories all belonged to the adult world; but children’s experiences of homelessness or evacuation had an emotional dimension that clearly surfaces in narratives of the past. A decree of 2 November 1940 defined a sinistré (a bombed-out person) as anyone who ‘cannot return to his house because of destruction or serious damage resulting from acts of war’. This was after the 1940 civilian exodus in the face of the oncoming Wehrmacht, but before the Allied bombing intensified. While the millions of refugees had scattered widely, sinistrés were confined to areas where ground fighting had occurred – in the north and east. Sinistrés received the same state allowance as refugees if they were classed as needy; if not needy, they received nothing. The status of sinistré thus rested upon financial need rather than loss of home or property.8 But the Allies’ air raids created large numbers of sinistrés. On 3 March 1942 in Boulogne-Billancourt 9,548 people were bombed out.9 This figure only includes those allocated a sinistré card. Thousands more suffered damage to property but did not qualify for sinistré status. When emergency aid for all sinistrés was introduced in September 1942, definitions became tighter: ‘[A]‌dwelling is considered habitable as soon as it is deemed structurally safe and offers shelter and heating, even if the windows and shutters are smashed.’10 Bombing posed a huge challenge to the French State, already grappling with growing difficulties of public order and food supply. The local crises provoked by air raids put immense pressure on rationing, housing, employment and medical services. Although new forms of state assistance evolved, the task became so great that other aid agencies were created, adapted or drafted in to help the sinistrés. Foremost among the agencies offering aid was the Secours National, which Jean-Pierre Le Crom has recently analysed in great detail.11 Set up during the First World War, re-established under the Daladier government in 1939 and reshaped by Vichy in 1940, it was a vast organisation with a mission to aid civilian victims of war. A parapublic organisation, it was fiercely loyal to the National Revolution, and particularly to Pétain, its honorary president. The charity was active wherever civilians were v 139 v

Experiencing bombing affected by war, most notably in the fight against malnutrition, but also helping refugees and the families of prisoners of war; relief for sinistrés was just one of its activities.12 It was supposed to intervene in the aftermath of an air raid only if the public authorities were unable to cope.13 While the state’s aid sought to re-establish normal life, the Secours National acted as a stopgap.14 Yet the extent of its intervention testifies to the difficulties the state faced. The Secours National was at the forefront of food distribution, in the short term through its mobile kitchens and in the longer term through community restaurants. Clothing the sinistrés was the official responsibility of the departmental clothing bank, but again, the Secours National played a vital role, organising collections and mending workshops. It also distributed emergency financial aid.15 Despite a rhetorical obsession with national solidarity, its aid was not universal. People received it as charity, following judgements made about whether they were sufficiently deserving. Its assistance was not an entitlement. Helping the sinistrés in the aftermath of bombing became a politically charged task. As state aid was so slow, and the Secours National was hampered by bureaucracy, space opened up for others to step into. The Comité Ouvrier de Secours Immédiat (COSI, Workers’ Emergency Relief Committee) was founded in March 1942, before the advent of emergency state aid for all sinistrés later that year, and provided on-the-spot cash payments, although its activity was broader, including furniture removal and storage, small repairs, finding lodgings, exerting ‘moral pressure’ on unhelpful landlords and lending furniture (sourced from the seizure of Jewish property).16 The COSI’s leadership came from the ‘collaborationist left’, men from syndicalist backgrounds, many coming out of anti-communist neo-socialism of the 1930s, and most with links to Marcel Déat’s Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) or Jacques Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français (PPF).17 The COSI’s (many) critics condemned it as a tool of German propaganda but it was at pains to emphasise that its finance came from Parisian trade unions.18 The Germans also gave it one hundred million francs, however, which came from a fine imposed on French Jews.19 A  fundraising drive in the collaborationist media raised a further ten million francs, and when Déat entered the government in 1944, he allocated public funding to the COSI. By October 1943, the COSI had set up eighty-seven local committees and claimed to have aided 65,000 families.20 It also ran parties for bombed-out children, owned two children’s evacuation centres, and sought family placements for child evacuees. It took a special interest in elderly workers, made v 140 v

The consequences of bombing hospital visits, assisted the families of prisoners of war and French workers in Germany, as well as the unemployed. The COSI’s self-proclaimed achievements must be subject to scepticism, so steeped are they in its propaganda. It developed a longer-term activity for bombed-out civilians, setting up in late 1942 the ‘Associations des Sinistrés’ (Associations of Bombed-Out People), inciting bomb victims to unite and petition for assistance.21 Nominally self-governing, these associations relied on their local COSI for material and leadership. In particular, they drew on the legal expertise of the COSI, which petitioned the government using the language of justice and entitlement: ‘The nation owes you,’ COSI activist Bernard Feuilly told an Association meeting.22 Civilians, the associations argued, should be entitled to the same compensation as military victims.23 The associations also called for tax exemptions, rent reductions, an increase in allowances, permission to recuperate materials from bombsites, and reimbursements for lost furniture based on current not pre-war prices.24 By October 1943, there were more than 140 Associations des Sinistrés in the Occupied Zone.25 Spontaneous donations from private individuals, companies, distant local councils, schools and so on provided a further source of economic aid for sinistrés. Following the raid of 3 March 1942, private donations of 1.4 million francs arrived at Boulogne-Billancourt Town Hall, in sums ranging from a few francs to thousands. Donations in Reichsmarks were sent from French prisoners of war, their contributions boosted by the favourable exchange rate. Jeannine Coppin wrote that her little girls’ magazine offered a toy doll to every reader who had been bombed out. Bombing brought some kind of unity to a fragmented nation through acts of solidarity that were separate from the acts of solidarity orchestrated by Vichy or politically motivated groups like the COSI. The charitable impulse was widespread; common ground was emphasised by the capricious nature of bombs as they fell on diverse targets. Although the experience of bombing was localised, and is localised in memory, charitable giving was broader. Once more, the divisions commonly foregrounded within French society were bridged by compassion and many gave willingly. Children’s awareness of their families’ financial matters was rooted in the concrete consequences of loss in their daily lives. Édith Denhez from Cambrai remembered the humiliation of going to school with holes in her clothes. For other child sinistrés, however, the more noticeable consequence of bombing was not losing possessions or the recourse to charity, but moving house. Cash-strapped municipalities v 141 v

Experiencing bombing and départements had a complex problem on their hands. Of the 2,000 families bombed out of their homes following the Renault raid of 3 March 1942, just over half asked to be rehoused; the rest said they would make their own arrangements.26 More than 400 sinistrés lodged at the Alexandre Luquet Departmental Housing Centre; others were sent to the Lourcine Barracks while more permanent homes were found.27 Two hundred private rentals were available in Boulogne-Billancourt, as well as many flats in public housing across the département of the Seine. The cooperative society la France-Mutualiste had built a street in Boulogne in which eighty-eight people were rehoused.28 Elsewhere in Paris, the Salvation Army’s Cité de Refuge offered beds to eighty men, women and children, and the Maison du Jeune Homme took around fifty men.29 Danielle Durville’s family was housed temporarily in three different locations – ‘we were pushed around a bit’, she said. Eventually they found a place in rue de la France-Mutualiste, where she has lived ever since. Danielle was not the only interviewee who had to relocate. As with civil defence preparations, families improvised solutions, drawing on their own networks of kin, friends and colleagues. Thérèse Leclercq was sent to live with her grandmother, twenty kilometres from Hellemmes, while the house was repaired. As soon as it was ready, her father, whose job prevented him from leaving the area, ‘wanted to reconstitute the family’, and brought everyone home – back, indeed, to several industrial targets. Some families were able to rent another property after their house was damaged. At Sonia Agache’s home in Hellemmes, the internal walls had collapsed. Her father rented a house very close to her grown-up siblings. Remaining linked into family networks was paramount:  ‘we didn’t want to go far away, you see’, she commented. Wherever possible, families huddled closer together rather than dispersing vulnerable members away from danger:  ‘we moved back into a fairly dangerous zone’, Sonia acknowledged. Separation risked dismantling the social structures that underpinned daily life. In the railway workers’ housing estate at Lille-Délivrance, Pierre Haigneré recalled that his family was given some official financial assistance, but as for finding a place to live, ‘we had to sort it out for ourselves’. He did not know how his parents found new lodgings with the widow of a rich army officer in a nearby village. Children were rarely privy to such discussions. There was a limit to their understanding of decision-making processes. As the narratives of those who became refugees will confirm, domestic upheavals were disorientating and distressing. Those rehoused on a permanent or semi-permanent v 142 v

The consequences of bombing basis spoke less of the disturbance than those who felt shunted from pillar to post.

Refugees People became refugees during the war for a variety of reasons, and a great deal has been written on the refugees of the 1940 civilian exodus. Those affected by bombing have been little considered. Some people chose to leave home because of the threat; others left in the aftermath, either as sinistrés, or because destruction to local facilities had made daily life impossible, or because they were scared. They had not necessarily lost their homes. Leaving in this way was often called ‘evacuation’ but the people were ‘refugees’. They could receive an allowance if they were needy, as well as contributions to rent, the purchase of household items and food. However, receiving assistance was conditional. First, it depended on work status. Only people not contributing to the economic life of the town were permitted to leave; these inutiles (‘useless’ people) included children, the elderly, the infirm, women raising children, people in jobs not deemed ‘useful’, and the unemployed.30 The allowance was based on similar calculations to the sinistré allowance, with slight differences that led to the Prefect of the Seine complaining that sinistrés were ‘treated worse than refugees’.31 He noted that only one bombed-out family in forty was poor enough to receive a sinistré allowance, although all sinistrés faced huge, unplanned expenses. Refugees, on the other hand, only received the allocation if they were poor, but family members could continue to receive it even after the breadwinner had found work. The second condition concerned destination. Population movement had to be controlled first to ensure that local resources were sufficient to meet demand, and second to monitor potentially disruptive elements. Refugees were supposed to go to rural areas of their own département until all local possibilities were exhausted.32 Encouraged to leave Brest from 1941, refugees placed immense pressure on surrounding rural communes, physically and administratively. These became so overwhelmed in May 1941 that they could not even determine the correct quantity of extra rations needed. Billets in private homes were almost exhausted, and refugees would soon need to be housed collectively, which, one local sub-prefect feared, ‘would contribute to preparing fertile ground for communist propaganda, always ready to profit from discontent’. He proposed the establishment of a departure centre in Brest. Potential refugees had to register or would not receive their rations. Reception communes v 143 v

Experiencing bombing could also be prepared for their arrival. In order to receive refugee allowances, people had to show a lodging certificate from the mayor of the destination town or village to prove in advance that they had somewhere to stay. If they did not have friends or family, they were to go the reception département that had been assigned to their home town in March 1942.33 Each evacuating département had a second reception département allocated in case the first became saturated.34 By controlling population movement, the authorities hoped to secure sufficient resources and temper rising tension. Among the three towns that this book treats, only Brest had a sustained experience of evacuation; it thus provides a useful focus for looking at children’s experiences as refugees. By February 1941, Mayor Victor Le Gorgeu was encouraging people to leave; two years later, departure became compulsory for 12,000 inutiles. The rest of the civilian population was then wholly evacuated before the siege of Brest in August 1944. Across the years of occupation, refugees ebbed and flowed in and out of the town. Many of those I interviewed left several times, sometimes with family, sometimes as lone child evacuees, whose experiences are considered later in this chapter. Some departures were precipitated by bombing. The daylight raid of July 1941 made Yvette Cadiou’s father decide that ‘it was too dangerous for us. He wanted us to go somewhere else, away from the bombs.’ Her father remained in Brest while his wife and daughters went to rural Huelgoat. Brest’s citizens were usually reluctant to leave home, which troubled the mayor who wished to protect them. He recognised that they feared being separated, had financial worries, and were afraid their homes might be destroyed, looted or requisitioned.35 While some newspapers emphasised kindness towards refugees, this was contradicted elsewhere. The Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest wrote of the ‘sorrows’ of the Brestois in Rennes, homesick for ‘the port, the great sea winds that whistle through the straits, a whole landscape at once so familiar and so essential, and that they long to return to’.36 But homesickness was a hardship that could be borne. Material scarcities created worse problems. Food shortages were accentuated during the winter months when local people in reception areas lacked a surplus to share. It was reported that they sold what goods they had at prices beyond the reach of the refugees.37 While generous donations arrived for sinistrés, refugees seemed to be more of a burden. Yvette Cadiou said that ‘the refugees, well, the people of Huelgoat didn’t like them much. They didn’t have much to eat themselves. And so they were scared that we’d take their food.’ In hindsight, Yvette understood why the welcome was tepid. At the time, her parents v 144 v

The consequences of bombing struggled to feed their daughters, and slipped into illegality, stealing and black marketeering. The mayor of Brest, who had expended so much energy encouraging his population to leave, interceded with the mayor of Huelgoat asking him to take pity on the refugees.38 Mayor Le Gorgeu’s successor, Victor Eusen, continued to campaign on his refugees’ behalf. Accommodation was also problematic. Michel Floch remarked that on the farm where he and his parents slept on straw in the byre, ‘we weren’t made that welcome’. Like Yvette, however, he reasoned that resources were tight for everyone. The family moved on to a place owned by a couple with four children, who ‘were annoyed at having to give us their rooms’. Being shifted onwards was common. It was the focus of Cécile Bramé’s refugee story; time and again, her family were unwelcome and took again to the road, like tramps. It was humiliating and uncomfortable. First, she, her parents, her sister and a neighbour went to Saint-Renan; ‘we were seven or eight people in one room, and slept on the ground’. They were soon told to leave, and moved on to Ploudalmézeau, where they learnt ‘there’s no space, you’ll have to go further away’. Then, her father met a farmer who told them: ‘Well, if you want, come with me. You can sleep here, but there’s nothing for you to eat.’ The welcome was cool and they slept in the hayloft, but they were desperate. Such precarity left a strong impression on Cécile. The endless tramping, now a little muddled in its sequencing, had become a point of obsessive return in her narrative. Yet in her quest for composure, these uncomfortable memories had a triumphant denouement. Not only did they lead into her much-loved teaching career, as we have seen, but in the town of Lannion, ‘I was a refugee in a castle! Yes indeed. I slept in the Marchioness’ bedroom!’ She spoke gleefully: after the humiliation of the road, this seemed a kind of justice. The change in status on becoming a refugee was noticeable, if not comprehensible, for small children. Yvette remarked that ‘bizarrely, they called us “the refugees” ’. Of course, her family were refugees, but the label and its association hurt. It was noted in the Dépêche that Brest’s refugees in the département of the Sarthe, ‘live in a little world of their own’. Some took on mending and cleaning work if they could find it: as rations were insufficient and resources were scarce, an income was a necessity.39 So it seemed there was a difference between the way sinistrés and refugees were treated. Sinistrés could be kept at arm’s length; their well-publicised tragedies inspired charitable giving. Refugees, on the other hand, were too close for comfort. Charity face to face was more difficult, and resources were not always shared. v 145 v

Experiencing bombing Yet it would be wrong to see the response to the refugees’ plight as devoid of compassion. As propaganda organs, newspapers were not neutral, yet their reports of charity and good organisation suggest positive experiences too. Refugee Madame Creff wrote thanking the Secours National for its role in her group’s journey to the Loir-et-Cher. She praised youth workers’ helpfulness, the Red Cross nurses’ compassion and various acts of kindness along her journey, as well as the warm welcome at her destination, where local people ‘bent over backwards to get us comfortable places to stay and all the necessary utensils’.40 Similarly, a Breton priest visiting refugees in the Sarthe wrote that despite homesickness and scarce resources – he mentioned that some women were living ‘next door to poverty’  – the reception département was making a big effort. He acknowledged ‘the open hospitality shown in numerous localities, each competing with the other in its enthusiasm to welcome the refugees’.41 While these stories were reported as part of a drive to encourage evacuation, they nonetheless demonstrate that a range of experience existed. Refugees also found support among their fellow townspeople, those who stayed in Brest, and those who had left. A  charity set up in June 1943 to help Brest’s refugees appealed to those unscathed by bombing to assist ‘their unfortunate brothers’. Around 22,000 francs were collected by early July, a third of which had been sent from Germany by Brest’s prisoners of war. By August 1943, nine ‘Foyers Brestois’ (Brest Homes) had been established in the reception départements. Each ‘Foyer’ was managed by a social worker from Brest, and stocked with local newspapers and useful information. It was hoped that refugees would find ‘a little of the atmosphere of their home town’.42 A 5,000-franc donation from the twinning initiative the Comité Lyon-Brest enabled the purchase of nine sewing-machines, ‘so the women can work while chatting about home’.43 Refugees also united to petition for provisions and better treatment, as in December 1943 when those in Briec were left without fuel, the recent heavy rain having spoilt the wood they usually gathered. Villagers would not share their coal, so they sought help from the mayor of Brest.44 The scale and provenance of donations indicates how widespread sympathy for sinistrés was; their plight also made for good anti-Allied propaganda, as will be seen. Yet refugees, sleeping rough, black marketeering, competing for local resources were evidence of a country in disarray, the erosion of the state’s grip on authority; their treatment also highlighted cracks in national solidarity. v 146 v

The consequences of bombing

Child evacuees: policy The evacuation of French children has received little attention compared to that which took place in other countries. Evacuation was run jointly by the Refugee Services at the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Education, and put into action by their representatives in the départements and municipalities, with further important contributions made by independent initiatives such as charities, religious groups, political organisations and professional associations. Family solutions were also common. Some children were billeted in private homes, others were housed collectively in castles and camps. Before the war, the French population was told that ‘plans have been established for the removal and dispersal of the population in case of an aerial attack’.45 ‘Evacuation’ here (évacuation) referred only to the compulsory retreat of civilians on military order from ground combat zones. Three other forms of ‘evacuation’ were envisaged from 1931: withdrawal (repliement), affecting frontier regions only; dispersal (dispersion) for urban areas, thinning population density by moving people within a limited periphery; and removal (éloignement), where urban dwellers would be sent to the safer countryside. Therefore under a broad heading of ‘evacuation’ came four distinct activities.46 Évacuation and repliement were envisaged only for the north and east, anticipating a war on the geographical lines of 1914–18. The only urban centres for which dispersion and éloignement had been planned by September 1939 were Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Faith in frontier fortifications and the celebrated strength of the French army precluded public discourse on civilian evacuation: planning would admit the potential failure of the Maginot Line. Discussion was seen as alarmist, even defeatist.47 Such limitations to planning caused problems in September 1939, confusion in summer 1940 and hindered nationwide preparations.48 At the outbreak of war, vulnerable parts of the populations of Paris, Lyon and Marseille were moved out of city centres and citizens in border regions were evacuated under official schemes. The exodus of May 1940 was in fact a vast évacuation away from actual and anticipated ground combat zones, part official, but mostly unofficial. This mass civilian displacement was always called ‘the evacuation’ by the people I interviewed from the département of the Nord. Defeat and armistice changed everything, however, and henceforth evacuation evolved with the evolution of bomb targets. Vichy’s policy on evacuation was slow and reactive. In November 1941, a government circular instructed prefects of coastal departments v 147 v

Experiencing bombing to plan the evacuation of children and pregnant women as a precaution.49 The air raid of 3 March 1942 on Boulogne-Billancourt moved policy forward, leading to the creation of ‘threatened zones’, from which children were to be removed. A circular of 3 April 1942 advised municipalities, the Red Cross and the Secours National to coordinate evacuation activities, but no unifying body was set up.50 With no compulsory evacuation permitted, the Association of Mayors of Bombed Coastal Towns complained that their populations had been abandoned.51 In summer 1942, prefects were instructed by Vichy to prepare for ‘massive’ evacuations à froid (‘cold’, in advance of heavy raids).52 Yet activity did not ensue: the destruction of Lorient, for example, in January 1943, was followed by a chaotic, mass evacuation à chaud (‘hot’, in the aftermath of heavy raids).53 This prompted the creation of SIPEG (see Chapter 5), evidence that piecemeal preparations were starting to cohere.54 In April 1943, the mayors of the sorely tried coastal towns complained again that the government needed to take responsibility for evacuation, showing that SIPEG’s nominal leadership remained to be felt.55 By February 1944, a national policy was starting to emerge. Yet German reluctance to order large-scale evacuations meant that, however much French planning improved, actively evacuating people remained dependent on the occupiers’ consent. The German authorities prevented citizens leaving threatened towns in the areas where they exerted direct military control, and even censored pubic discussion of evacuation.56 While some mayors could pressure parents to evacuate their children voluntarily, this was impossible in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, which was dependent on the strict Brussels authorities for permission to move civilians. In February 1943, the mayor of Dunkirk wrote that more than 2,000 children remained in the town, where shelter provision was poor,57 and two months later, the mayors of Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne complained that, although they wanted people to leave, ‘the French administration cannot give them the order, and the Belgian administration does not seem to envisage evacuation’. The mayor of Dunkirk despaired that ‘nothing can be done to prepare the evacuation of the children’ and as such he saw the future ‘with a great deal of pessimism’.58 The Germans forbade many workers in Brest to leave, which was good news for a population reluctant to go, but bad news for French administrators who keenly felt their duty of protection.59 The Germans wanted to maintain economic life in towns where large numbers of soldiers and essential workers lived. Large-scale population movement was complicated and potentially threatened internal security. They also knew that ordering evacuation would send a dangerous v 148 v

The consequences of bombing message that Allied air raids were overwhelming anti-aircraft defences in France. Retaining the population also provided a wealth of opportunities for anti-Allied propaganda. So no collective movement of children was possible without the agreement of the occupying authorities.60 Yet as raids intensified, the Germans began to force the evacuation of inutiles to guarantee rations for essential workers.61 This showed them in a better light: they seemed to ‘care’ when the Allies did not. Certainly it is not inconceivable that there were humanitarian as well as operational concerns behind the total evacuation of Brest in advance of the siege: ‘to avoid losses’, wrote an organising German officer ‘that we cannot begin to imagine’.62 But the Germans were not the only obstacle. Parents’ reluctance to part with children impeded evacuation. The health benefits of a stay in the country were emphasised, as they had been to promote the colonies de vacances (children’s holiday camps) in peacetime. But poorer families feared that losing children’s rations could have a devastating effect on the family food budget.63 Sending a child away was fraught with anxiety, particularly as reception departments were distant and visiting was difficult because of travel restrictions.64 Parents also worried about the care children would receive.65 Children’s health could affect their chance of being accepted on evacuation schemes. Bedwetters and those with infectious diseases were not accepted, although many did slip through the net, their problems unnoticed until they arrived at their destination.66 One means of coercing parents to evacuate their children – still voluntarily – was to close schools. A further coercive tactic, used in Brest in early 1943, was to withhold ration cards from parts of the population the authorities wished to leave. People in Brest were advised that from 25 February 1943 only ration cards for E, J3, A, T and C would be renewed; rations for J1, J2 and V categories (children aged three to thirteen and the elderly over seventy years) could only be obtained with an evacuation form indicating their imminent departure.67 Evacuation experiences were locally specific. In September 1939, Boulogne-Billancourt set about implementing the evacuation plans previously communicated to parents.68 About 15,000 Parisian children were already in the countryside on holiday, and 30,000 more were due to join them. Some of this extra contingent left Boulogne-Billancourt in convoys organised by the Prefecture on 30 August bound for the Loire-Inférieure, accompanied by teachers. The majority of the 8,500-strong school population left the town (either on state-sponsored schemes or through family connections), and schools were closed. However, the children’s v 149 v

Experiencing bombing accommodation was very poor in these destinations, and following an angry protest from the mayors of the Seine, the children were moved to the Nièvre to an existing colonie de vacances of family placements.69 Yet the calmness of the skies meant that many returned home and schools reopened. In spring 1940, Mayor André Morizet again attempted to persuade parents to evacuate children in advance of any attack: around 11 per cent of children were evacuated to the Nièvre by the municipality. The remainder would, parents promised, be sent to rural relatives.70 But the 1940 exodus upset many plans to evacuate children left in their parents’ care. The next wave of evacuation followed the Allied bombing of the Renault factory in March 1942; areas of the town were declared ‘threatened zones’ and children living there were supposed to go to one of seven reception departments.71 Yet when Boulogne-Billancourt’s second raid occurred in April 1943 it was estimated that about 8,000 under-fifteens were still there.72 The voluntary evacuation of children was then moved up a gear, but not made compulsory. By 5 May 1943, 2,000 children had left the Parisian suburbs bound for the Creuse, 800 of them from Boulogne-Billancourt (see Figure 4).73 At the end of July, the mayor estimated the child population at 3,000.74 Convoys continued to leave the town until the summer of 1944. Before war broke out, Brest had been designated a ‘critical zone’ and plans made for the dispersal of part of its population into the surrounding countryside.75 The Phoney War saw no decrease in the town’s population, but when the Allied bombing began in September 1940, civilians ebbed away of their own accord. Air raids intensified in 1941 and in February, the non-active population was strongly advised to leave.76 The first daylight raid in July led the mayor to request that evacuation become compulsory. His request was denied, but around 30,000 people – including Yvette Cadiou – went voluntarily to nearby countryside, leaving a population of 35,000 in Brest intra-muros.77 In autumn 1941 Brest’s schools remained closed, and from January 1942 convoys of children – including Henri Le Turquais  – began to leave, bound for the Sarthe.78 The twinning charity Comité Lyon-Brest offered billets in Lyon for 400 children, although take-up was poor: only twenty-eight children left in March, and another fifteen in May, leading to recriminations against ‘selfish’ parents.79 Following the area bombing of Lorient, and fearing Brest would be next, the evacuation of 12,000 inutiles was ordered on 9 February 1943, and regular convoys of children and adults began to leave for the Sarthe and the Loir-et-Cher.80 Nine thousand inhabitants left over the next two months, and by July 1944 there were 26,338 inhabitants left v 150 v

The consequences of bombing

Figure  4 The first convoy of children evacuated from BoulogneBillancourt arriving in Guéret in the Creuse in April 1943 after a long train journey. in the town.81 The next wave of evacuation began on 3 August 1944 before the siege; total civilian evacuation was ordered by the Germans, and until 17 September the entire population was fewer than 3,000 people.82 At the outbreak of war, Lille’s population was invited to seek refuge from potential air raids in Montreuil-sur-Mer, and then move on to rural locations.83 Much of Lille’s population took to the roads during the exodus in 1940. But from then on, the occupiers halted any further official evacuation initiatives in Lille.84 However, many children did leave on various smaller-scale schemes. When heavy air raids began, a range of organisations stepped up to help Lille’s 22,000-strong school-age population.85 Thousands of children went to the département’s rural holiday camps during the summer months, while other organisations specifically targeted child victims of war.86 The Fondation Guynemer sent batches of fifty children ‘whose homes have been destroyed by the war’ to stay with members of the Légion française in Algeria,87 and by January 1942 the Swiss Secours aux Enfants (Save the Children) had brought a total of 2,200 children from ‘war victim families’ to Switzerland for three-month stints.88 This was evacuation hiding beneath the acceptable cloak of the v 151 v

Experiencing bombing colonies de vacances. The difference was that these schemes now extended to all children affected by war, not just the poor, and now ran during school term-time, not just in the holidays. In April 1942 four ‘threatened zones’ were designated in Lille, and the evacuation of 6,500 children was to be organised.89 All schools there closed, but no further incentive to encourage evacuation was given. Children from the threatened zones were sent for half days to schools in central Lille, creating logistical problems of space, shelters, out-of-hours childcare and transport. The mayor protested at the rising juvenile delinquency. Children were safer at school, he said, away from the ‘serious moral dangers’ of the streets.90 The closest the suburbs came to forced evacuation was ten days after the bombing of Lille-Délivrance on 10 April 1944. Prime Minister Pierre Laval telegrammed the prefect:  ‘protect children Lille’, all schools were to be closed (they already were, of course). Prefect Carles was told to intensify voluntary evacuation, which could now be made compulsory. It never happened.91 So while numerous children did manage to spend time away from Lille’s dangerous industrial areas, they were never officially evacuated.

Child evacuees: experience In the oral narratives, memories of evacuation were vividly linked to bombing. As with bombing, common external factors, such as locality, created similarities of experience, but the meanings that emerged from these sometimes traumatic periods grew from a more subjective root, including relationships with carers or the circumstances of family separation. The picture I present here is incomplete, however; these interviewees self-selected on bombing not evacuation experiences; as such, certain central experiences of evacuation  – such as being billeted with strangers – are missing from the group of people I spoke to. Most of those in Brest were evacuated at least once, either alone or in a group. Of those from Boulogne-Billancourt, a couple went on group evacuations, and some benefited from family connections. In Lille, only Josette Dutilleul was evacuated out of the département for a short period. For much of the war, as evacuation was voluntary it depended on parental decisions, and being bombed could act as a catalyst for action. In Boulogne-Billancourt, Michèle Martin, Jeannine Coppin and the Thomas brothers were sent away following air raids. Claude and Michel Thomas stayed with their grandmother in central France for two years, Jeannine with an aunt. In Michèle’s narrative, the complexities of decision-making v 152 v

The consequences of bombing are apparent. Some of her classmates were killed during the raids of September 1943: After that, I couldn’t stand being in Boulogne anymore […] But Mum didn’t want us to leave our house. If she left it, she said, it would be destroyed. All around us, lots of people had rented apartments in central Paris. That, for my mother, wasn’t an option […] And even though my grandmother in Viroflay could have taken me in, it was still too close to Paris. Mum wanted me to leave.

Michèle’s words explain something of the discussions underlying her evacuation to the Normandy countryside. Three alternatives were rejected – her mother leaving too, the family renting in central Paris, and staying with her grandmother. It is possible that she was involved with the decision-making process; she appears to have been aware of it. At least she could attribute to bombing a direct, external role in her being sent away, which made it easier to accept separation. Things were different in Brest, where bombs fell regularly from 1940, and more heavily in spring and summer 1941. Yet bombing rarely decided parents to evacuate their children, perhaps because everyone had grown used to living with sirens and shelters. However, parents lost their power to choose when the evacuation of the inutiles became obligatory in February 1943, and children were removed from their care. In Yvette Chapalain’s narrative, parents are absent from the decision:  ‘children were ordered to leave the town’. Yvette thus absolves them of any responsibility for the unhappy times that followed. Nor was there a choice in destination. Jean Pochart gave the impression of children being sent ‘left, right and centre’, scattered haphazardly across the department. Older children like Yvette Chapalain returned to Brest, bombs notwithstanding, as soon as they turned fourteen; now part of the J3 ration group of young people aged fourteen to twenty-one, they were no longer deemed ‘useless’. It appears that forced departure from a place where bombs were frightening but now familiar was more distressing than staying there. Material and emotional factors contributed to the evacuated children’s wellbeing. Josette Dutilleul was sent to a colonie de vacances-style mountain retreat. She did not mention living conditions; instead, her description focused on the natural environment. From the cramped streets of industrial Hellemmes, the countryside was inspiring, and importantly ‘we had enough to eat’. Like Yvette Chapalain, Jean Pochart, Yves Le Roy and Henri Le Turquais (all from Brest), Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt) was sent to a boarding-school-type institution, run by a religious order. For v 153 v

Experiencing bombing Michèle, like Josette, environment and rations determined her positive experience: ‘We were in the countryside, we went gathering things in the woods, we got to do things we couldn’t do [at home] […]. We were in a peaceful place, and well fed.’ Michèle made no negative reference to the conditions she lived in. For Jean Pochart, evacuated to a boarding-school near Quimper, regime and environment made life hard. The boys slept fifty to a room, in conditions Jean described as ‘spartan’, rising at six in the morning, in an unheated dormitory, washing in cold water. There were long hours of schoolwork and meals taken in silence. Weekend leisure was highly controlled, consisting of ‘silent walks in single file’ although there was sometimes football too. Yves Le Roy’s first evacuation, again to a Catholic boarding school, was similarly strict. Yves’ description is more damning, hinting at his unhappiness. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘it was a prison. There were great big walls all around, and we never left.’ As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, Yvette Chapalain also felt angry at the lack of compassion the nuns showed her and her little sister. Even as a thirteen-year-old, Yvette had recognised the injustice of the situation. She did not speak of curtailments to her freedom, as the men did, but focused on emotional deprivation: ‘we didn’t get much affection there.’ Yvette remains indignant that children were separated from their parents and sent to these institutions. While not all children had such a bad time, and some thoroughly enjoyed the adventure, others felt unwanted and neglected. That unhappiness remained imprinted in memory. If children felt safe from harm, it could make separation easier to bear. Josette commented that ‘we no longer had any fear of the bombs’, while Michèle said that ‘we heard the waves of planes passing over us’, their targets more distant and unknown. Again in Brest it was different. Evacuated children knew that air raids continued on their home town, and as they had been sent to the nearby countryside they could even see them happening. Jean Pochart said he felt more afraid ‘being there than here. There was this great big question mark. But when we were all together, you’d say “whatever happens, happens”.’ As already noted, family and community provided physical and emotional security, both of which could disappear when children were separated from their families. Yves Le Roy was haunted by his anxieties: ‘What I feared most of all was that my parents would be killed and I’d become an orphan.’ Serge Aubrée watched the sky above his hometown from afar: ‘We could see the bombs, the searchlights, and then sometimes the anti-aircraft guns […]. We were pretty worried – where were our parents?’ Cécile Bramé agreed:  ‘There were flashes from explosions v 154 v

The consequences of bombing over Brest. It was really awful.’ Her family remained there, exposed to the dangers that she knew all too well. Evacuated children benefited from contact with home and familiar people. Josette Dutilleul was neither lonely nor homesick:  ‘I love being part of a group, I  love being with people, so I  never felt lonely. I  was there with people from our neighbourhood, with the girls from our neighbourhood.’ Michèle Martin’s parents visited her once a month in Normandy. Henri Le Turquais’ grandmother managed to visit him in the Sarthe ‘to comfort me a bit’, his mother having recently died. He also had an aunt and two cousins staying at the same castle, plus a good friend and his mother. Yvette Chapalain, on the other hand, remained with her two younger sisters (her brother was nearby, but boys and girls were separated), but did not see her parents regularly; she also missed her friends. Her homesickness was focused on these people. There were ‘no more goodnights, at bedtime. My mother wasn’t with us at bedtime. Tears, tears, thinking about home’. This family separation could be very distressing. These cases support the view that some British psychologists were putting forward during the war: bombing was bad, but evacuation could have more damaging consequences.92 So the consequences of bombing were varied and reached far beyond the air raids and their immediate aftermath. They included short- and long-term disruptions to daily life as well as the enormous domestic upheavals of homelessness, becoming a refugee or being evacuated. The way that children experienced the consequences depended on their personalities and on family circumstances, as well as the more solid variables of locality or age. Changes could be as exciting for some as they were distressing for others. For Pierre Haigneré it was not the raid on Lille-Délivrance in April 1944 but its consequences that introduced him to the full scale of the war. He said: [War] was much more present in my life afterwards. We were refugees, and it was there that I learnt about war. Perhaps I was just more conscious of things. I  have a very pleasant memory of that period in the countryside. I  got to know the local children, played with them, worked in the fields with them.

This was a time of realisation, friendship and discovery. For other children, being evacuated alone was an experience of profound sadness. Cécile Bramé spoke of ‘breaking up the family which creates anxiety’: for her, it was as bad as bombing. The memory of being separated was still painful for Yvette Chapalain. She said of this unhappy time:  ‘children v 155 v

Experiencing bombing should be with their families. We were orphans without quite being so.’ For Yvette  – and she is not alone  – the consequence of bombing was worse than bombing itself. Previous chapters showed that bombing was frightening, generated anxiety and could be traumatising. But the changed social relationships that also resulted from bombing did something similar when they led to negative experiences of exclusion, humiliation and separation. The importance of family stability and a known environment during moments of rupture is highlighted by these stories of evacuation. Changes in status as a result of bombing – becoming a sinistré, refugee or evacuee – had far-reaching consequences in some children’s lives, affecting their education and economic situation, and introducing them to different faces of human nature. Yvette Cadiou (Brest) learnt about hostility and uncharitableness; Édith Denhez (Cambrai) was told to accept her poverty with humility; Pierre Haigneré, Michel Jean-Bart (both from the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near Lille) and the children from Hellemmes experienced powerful solidarity between neighbours and friends. As the French State struggled to cope with the acute crises caused by air raids in localities already beset by administrative and supply problems, the strength of spontaneous neighbourly support in the wake of chance tragedies that struck single houses, whole streets or whole communities was apparent. This solidarity welled up from communities themselves, independent of Vichy’s appeals. The French State tried to paint this behaviour as evidence of its own success. A  certain amount of prejudice towards refugees, however, marks the charitable impulse as conditional. Yet widespread generosity towards sinistrés, participation in clearance and rescue – official or spontaneous – and the success of charitable fundraising drives testifies to a national sympathy for the victims of Allied bombing. The French State attempted a difficult mission of coordination. Indeed, local groups such as SALS in the Seine could prove more effective. Sometimes higher authorities – the French State or the German authorities – competed over priorities, with each other and with local authorities, as over the struggles to permit the evacuation of children. The local authorities also came into conflict with families reluctant to comply. Parents mirrored the tasks of the local authorities at a micro-level, acting as sirens, shelters and shields for their children; like the authorities, they often refused – or did not know how – to act a priori, making changes to routine, behaviour or lifestyle only after having been bombed. Children too reflected a broader trend as their (limited) decision-making abilities v 156 v

The consequences of bombing were undercut first by parental restrictions, but then, as parents also were pulled into deeper dependence on the state, by the higher authorities – municipality, state or Germans – evacuating them here and there, often against their will. Choices diminished as the war intensified in France. Children were able to learn from bombing and to adapt their responses over time. Knowledge had contradictory implications. The first raid  – before learning – could be particularly damaging. Those bombed for the first time during the heaviest raids of spring 1944 found the experience especially frightening, as for Michel Jean-Bart and Pierre Haigneré near the Lille-Délivrance railway station, Édith Denhez in Cambrai and Max Potter in the La Chapelle district of Paris. Children who were bombed more frequently, like those in Brest or Hellemmes, began to incorporate the inconvenience and the anxiety into daily life. Learning happened during the moment itself, as noises acquired meaning, and in the aftermath, which so vividly illustrated the range of possible outcomes of the sounds, establishing a causal structure. As with expectations of war, information stemmed from the concrete rather than the abstract. On one hand, knowledge gave children some ability to act. As we saw with Josette Dutilleul in Hellemmes, who listened for planes with her clothes laid out next to the bed, children developed routines. But knowledge created fear too: the routine in this case was part of Josette’s heightened night-time anxiety; such hypervigilence is associated with traumatic responses. On the other hand, ignorance could protect. For example, Michèle Martin in Boulogne-Billancourt was one of several narrators whose parents shielded them from the distressing spectacle of the bombsite. Yet ignorance endangered children too, as those who did not understand the threat could not envisage ways to protect themselves, as we saw with Édith Denhez and her sister, left panicking in the street. Agency appears as a function of age  – or rather, of developmental stage. This is not simply because of growth in knowledge and reasoning, but because of the additional freedoms accorded to older children. More likely to be out and about alone, children in later childhood and adolescence such as Serge Aubrée or André Dutilleul were capable of choosing their own course of action. Teenagers like Bernard Bauwens, Robert Belleuvre and Christian de la Bachellerie (all in Boulogne-Billancourt), were thrust into the adult world by their youth-group bombsite work; yet here their age removed their choices. None of the women interviewed had done bombsite work as part of a youth team. Older girls had shown mixed levels of awareness or responsibility. Andréa Cousteaux in Brest (an only child) seemed quite independent and moved around the town v 157 v

Experiencing bombing alone, whereas, also in Brest, Yvette Chapalain (the eldest of six) was more closely tied to home. Parents or other adults controlled the movements of younger children to a greater extent. Thérèse Leclercq and Sonia Agache were bombed while at school in Hellemmes; young children, they could not act independently to protect themselves, and relied on their teachers, following blindly. Here, then, it is a question of independence or dependence, and a spectrum between. Scaled up, similar restrictions faced bombed-out families (dependent on the state or charity for food, clothing, shelter), refugees (being directed where to go) or evacuees (being forced to leave home against one’s will). In their research on children, bombing and trauma, Barenbaum, Ruchkin and Schwab-Stone stated that the potential for traumatisation depended on a highly subjective interpretation of a traumatic experience whose context was social, shared and external. Both context and interpretation matter if we are to understand why some people are traumatised and others are not.93 Proximity to the bombs was part of the objective context of bombing, and depending on where they fell, bombing was a passive or active experience. From afar, as Serge Aubrée said, it was exciting or beautiful; up close, it was frightening, generating fear and helplessness. Proximity also gave rise to different experiences in the aftermath, particularly if home or school had been destroyed. Locality too was vital in determining the kind of experience, as depending on place, children underwent widely differing air raids, and were protected by the authorities in different ways. The presence or absence of family and the attributes of family members also shaped experiences of bombing, and affected the potential for traumatisation. When parents were present, it seems more likely that children were less frightened. Yet families are complex entities: multiple subjectivities and histories, all influencing each other in uncountable ways. Parents could endanger their children through complacency, or frighten them further, as did Marie-Thérèse Termote’s mother who waited at the window while her daughter sheltered below. The way in which bombing was interpreted was affected by the child’s disposition or temperament as well. A  tendency towards curiosity, braveness, timidity or resilience made a difference to behaviour and response. People’s own perceptions of their power to act also matter in their subjective interpretations of events. To feel that one had made a good decision, or been smiled upon by fate or luck or blessed by God could help individuals come to terms with disturbing memories. Robert Belleuvre’s good decision not to go to the Petit-Jaurès cinema on 4 April 1943 helped him accept the terrible bad v 158 v

The consequences of bombing luck of his three classmates. Becoming a refugee or an evacuee did not usually pose a direct physical threat to the self, but its power to distress often seemed greater than the bombs themselves. Children’s understanding of the world was based more on the concrete than the abstract, but distress was just as likely to emerge from an abstract threat (loss) as a concrete one (bomb). Pessimistic or optimistic tropes shaped the interviewees’ interpretations of their experiences. Pessimistic interpretations still held within them the negative emotional marks of frightening air raids. Thérèse Leclercq had been too young to understand the chaos of the raids she survived, and she still felt unable to explain why this had happened and what it meant. Bernard Bauwens remained angry about his bombsite ordeal, while Yvette Chapalain was still troubled by, and angry about, evacuation. Other narrators used interpretive tricks to express horrible memories, such as Andréa Cousteaux’s contrasting tragi-comic stories of the blasted corpses. Cécile Bramé too found a silver lining in her unpleasant experiences, recognising, with hindsight, that remaining at boarding school while her family went home had enabled her to become a teacher. Some interviewees remained upbeat throughout their narratives of bombing: these events were not the ones that carved emotional scars. Among the interviewees, the Thomas brothers, André Dutilleul, Serge Aubrée, Madame Th and Josette Dutilleul were able to talk quite dispassionately about bombing. Do these tropes come from personality or from circumstance, or something of both? Once again, they militate against finding a handy formula for understanding why some people see themselves as traumatised and others do not. Air raids were idiographic events experienced by separate subjectivities. They happened only once in only one way – but they happened to a large number of people. They constituted a shared peril. In his analysis of the shared possibilities at the heart of oral history interviews that bridge the gap between the individual and the group, Portelli notes that ‘the subjective projection of imaginable experience’ is key – not ‘what materially happens to people’, but ‘what people know or imagine might happen’.94 The shared peril held inside it a shared set of fears; it also engendered a shared set of responses. The responses of the municipalities varied in efficiency; when they were weak, people were thrown onto kin and community networks for spontaneous mutual assistance. Almost everything – the threat, the damage, the response, the aid – existed at the level of the community. What is known as ‘Blitz spirit’ in Britain must lose its nationalistic overtones: this is not the preserve of plucky Londoners, v 159 v

Experiencing bombing but is a geographically widespread response to the shared threat of bombing. Responses were localised but were the same kind of responses everywhere.

Notes 1 M. Devigne, ‘ “Les enfants d’abord!” Le repli des écoles loin des dangers de la guerre en France (1939–1944)’, in Condette, Les Écoles dans la guerre, p. 379. 2 AMCB, 4H4.36: Le Télégramme, 8 November 1941. 3 AMCB, 4H4.35: Prefect of Finistère to all mayors, 16 February 1943. 4 AMBB, 6H18:  Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to all headteachers, 4 September 1943. 5 AMBB, 6H77: ‘Boulogne-Billancourt: bombardement du dimanche 4 avril 1943’, 1 May 1943. 6 AML, 5H10.3:  President of the ‘Mouvement populaire des familles de Moulins-Lille’ (Verheye) to Mayor of Lille, 29 July 1944. 7 AMCB, 4H4.27: Head of Local Health Services (Lemoyne) to President of the Special Delegation of Brest, 30 September 1943. 8 AML, 5H10.22:  Decree of 2 November 1940, in Prefect of the Nord to sub-prefects and mayors of the Nord, 5 December 1940. 9 AMBB, 6H72: ‘Réponse aux renseignements demandés par Melle Levenez […] sur les bombardements subis par la Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt’, 26 January 1945. 10 AML, 5H10.20:  Prefect of the Nord to Mayor of Lille, ‘Secours aux victimes du bombardement aérien du 10 mai 1944’, 12 May 1944. 11 J.-P. Le Crom, Au secours, Maréchal!L’instrumentalisation de l’humanitaire (1940–1944) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2013). 12 J.-P. Le Crom, ‘De la philanthropie à l’action humanitaire’, in Hesse and Le Crom, La protection sociale sous Vichy, pp.  163–78; J.-P. Le Crom, ‘Lutter contre la faim:  le rôle du Secours National’, in I.  von Bueltzingsloewen (ed.), Morts d’inanition. Famine et exclusions en France sous l’Occupation (Rennes:  Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), pp.  249–62; J.  S. Kulok ‘ “Trait d’union”:  the history of the French relief organization Secours National/Entraide Française under the Third Republic, the Vichy regime and the early Fourth Republic, 1939–49’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2003). 13 ADBR (Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône), 76W.200: Minister of Interior (Laval) to all prefects, 9 October 1940. 14 ADLA (Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, 1690W.146: Prefect of the Loire-Inférieure to sub-prefects and mayors, 19 June 1941. 15 ADLA, 1690W.146: Secours National, ‘Bulletin social et administratif ’, 31 March 1944.

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The consequences of bombing 16 ADM (Archives Départementales du Morbihan), 2W.1592:  Police Inspector Montfort to Head of General Information Service (in Vannes), Report of COSI public meeting in Pontivy on 6 June 1943, 8 June 1943; ADLA, 52J.611: COSI brochure, ‘Les autres tâches du COSI’, 15 June 1942. 17 ADLA, 52J.61:  COSI brochure, 15 June 1942; P.  Burrin, La Dérive fasciste: Doriot, Déat, Bergery, 1933–1945 (Paris: Seuil, 1986), pp. 397–9, 411, 439; P. Ory, Les Collaborateurs, 1940–1945 (Paris: Seuil, 1976), p. 140; Le Crom, ‘De la philanthropie’, p. 225. 18 ADN, 1W.1290: Chief Police Superintendent to Regional Prefect of Lille, report on COSI public meeting in Lille on 16 May 1943, 17 May 1943. 19 AML, 5H10.22: COSI leaflet ‘Alerte!’, undated but probably spring 1943; ‘Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France’, Rapport d’étape, April–December (1997), pp. 68–9, cited in Le Crom, ‘De la philanthropie’, p. 226, who writes that half of the 950 million francs raised by this fine went to the COSI. 20 Le Crom, ‘De la philanthropie’, pp. 226, 224. 21 ADN, 1W.1290: Chief Police Superintendent to Regional Prefect of Lille, report on COSI public meeting in Haubourdin, 26 September 1942. 22 ADN, 1W.1290:  Head of Secret Services in Lille to Prefect of the Nord, report on COSI public meeting of 22 November 1942, 23 November 1942. 23 ADLA, 52J.611: COSI brochure, ‘Les unions des sinistrés’, 15 June 1942. 24 ADN, 1W.1290: Head of Secret Services in Lille to Sub-Prefect of Dunkirk, Report on COSI public meeting on 27 September, 28 September 1942. 25 ADM, 2W.15921: COSI poster, ‘Aux Sinistrés Lorientais’, October 1943. 26 AMBB, 6H72: ‘Renseignements généraux sur le relogement des sinistrés’, undated (after 9 April 1942). 27 AMBB, 6H75: ‘Renseignements généraux sur le relogement des sinistrés’, 14 March 1942. 28 AMBB, 6H76:  ‘Rapport à Monsieur le Directeur des Affaires Départementales’, 8 March 1942. 29 AMBB, 6H75: ‘Adresses données par l’Armée du Salut le 5 mars 1942’, 5 March 1942. 30 AMBB, 6H81: Head of Refugee Services at Ministry of the Interior to all prefects, 21 April 1941. 31 AMBB, 6H75:  Prefect of the Seine to Head of Refugee Services at the Ministry of the Interior, 13 March 1942. 32 AMBB, 6H81: Deputy Director of Social Services for the Seine (Garnier) to mayors of suburban towns, 5 March 1942. 33 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Sub-Prefet of Chateaulin to Prefect of Finistère, 8 May 1941. 34 AMBB, 6H81: Deputy Director of Social Services for the Seine (Garnier) to mayors of suburban towns, 5 March 1942 35 AMCB, 4H4.35: Mayor of Brest to Prefect of Finistère, 1 August 1941.

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Experiencing bombing 36 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 23 October 1941. 37 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Departmental Refugee Controller’s report, 1 December 1943. 38 AMCB, 4H4.35: Mayor of Brest to Mayor of Huelgoat, 7 October 1941. 39 AMCB, 4H4.36: L’Ouest-Éclair, 16 June 1943. 40 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 26 March 1943. 41 AMCB, 4H4.36: L’Ouest-Éclair, 16 June 1943. 42 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 5 July 1943. 43 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 9 August 1943. 44 AMCB, 4H4.35: Kernaonet to President of Special Delegation of Brest, 21 December 1943. 45 AMBB, 6H3:  Brochure, ‘Ce qu’il faut faire pour vous protéger en cas d’attaque aérienne’, undated (pre-war). 46 J. Vidalenc, L’Exode de mai-juin 1940 (Paris:  Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), pp. 15–20; AMCB, 4H4.35: Minister of National Defence and War (Défense Passive) to all Prefects, ministers and military commanders, ‘Dispersion et éloignement’, 30 January 1939. 47 Vidalenc, L’Exode, pp. 17, 25. 48 Limited evacuation was tested during the Munich crisis, and its poor functioning was re-examined in the months that followed (M. Parsons, War Child: Children Caught in Conflict (Stroud: Tempus, 2008), p. 188). 49 ADN, 1W.1482:  Prefect-Delegate for the Ministry of the Interior in the Occupied Zone (Ingrand) to prefects of coastal departments, 27 November 1941. 50 ADN, 1W.123:  Secretary-General of Police (Rivalland) to all prefects, 3 April 1942. 51 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Mémoire présenté à Monsieur le Maréchal Pétain, Chef de l’État Français, et à Monsieur Pierre Laval, Président du Conseil, par Monsieur Pierre Courant, Maire du Havre, au nom des Maires des Villes côtières bombardées du Nord et de l’Ouest’, 16 May 1942. 52 ADC (Archives Départementales du Calvados), 9W.99:  Minister of the Interior (Laval) to all prefects, 1 February 1944 details circular 123 of 29 July 1942. 53 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Procès-verbal de la réunion des maires des villes côtières bombardées’, 10 April 1943. See Le Melledo, Lorient à l’heure de l’évacuation for a personal account of the civilian exodus from Lorient experienced by a boy in January 1943. 54 ADN, 1W.1482:  Minister of Interior (Laval) to all Prefects, 15 February 1943. 55 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Procès-verbal de la réunion des maires des villes côtières bombardées’, 10 April 1943. 56 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Évacuation totale ou partielle des villes menacées: rapport du Maire de Saint-Nazaire’, 11 May 1942.

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The consequences of bombing 57 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Procès-verbal de la réunion des maires des villes côtières bombardées’, 20 February 1943. 58 AMCB, 4H4.34: ‘Procès-verbal de la réunion des maires des villes côtières bombardées’, 10 April 1943. 59 AMCB, 4H4.35: Sub-Prefect of Brest (Trouille) to chiefs of public services in Brest, 16 February 1943. 60 AMBB, 6H19: Bouffet to mayors of Paris and the suburbs, 15 July 1943. 61 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Sub-Prefect of Brest (Trouille) to Mayors of Greater Brest, communication from Kreiskommandant (District Commander), 17 March 1943. 62 AMCB, 4H4.35: Major Habermass to President of the Special Delegation of Brest, 3 September 1944. 63 AMCB, 4H4.35: Mayor of Brest to Prefect of Finistère, 1 August 1941. 64 AMCB, 4H4.35: Mayor of Brest to Prefect of Finistère, 1 August 1941. 65 AMBB, 6H19: Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to Prefect of the Seine, 20 May 1943. 66 AMBB, 6H18:  Comité Sociale des Usines de Boulogne-Billancourt, undated. 67 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 19 February 1943. 68 AMBB, 6H17:  General Inspector of Public Education for the Seine (Masbou) to all headteachers of the Seine, 3 February 1939. 69 AMBB, 6H17:  Monsieur Dufaut to Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, 31 August 1939; Mayor of Suresnes (Sellier) to Interior Minister (Dormoy), 4 September 1939; Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land, p. 149. 70 AMBB, 6H18:  Association of Mayors of the Seine, ‘Enquête en vue de l’évacuation des enfants’, undated (probably March 1940). 71 AMBB, 6H19: GASS, ‘Instructions pour l’évacuation des enfants de zones menacées’, 1 June 1942. 72 AMBB, 6H19: Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to Prefect of the Seine, 18 September 1943. 73 AMBB, 6H18: Prefect of the Seine to Mayors of the Seine, 14 May 1943; 6H19: ‘Statistique du nombre d’enfants de Boulogne-Billancourt évacués par la Mairie et la Préfecture de la Seine depuis le 3 Mars 1943’, undated (after July 1944). 74 AMBB, 6H19: Mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt to Prefect of the Seine, 18 September 1943. 75 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Head of Défense Passive at the Ministry of War and National Defence (Daudin) to Prefect of Finistère, passed on to Mayor of Brest, 19 May 1939; ‘Ville de Brest. Plan de dispersion’, undated. 76 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Draft ‘Avis à la population’, signed Bolten (Kreiskommandant of Brest) and Mayor of Brest, 24 April 1941. 77 AMCB, 4H4.35:  Mayor of Brest to Prefect of Finistère, 1 August 1941; 4H4.36: L’Ouest-Éclair, 5 August 1941; 4H4.25: ‘Incidences des principaux

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Experiencing bombing bombardements subis par la Ville de Brest au cours de la guerre’, 10 April 1946. 78 AMCB, 4H4.36: L’Ouest-Éclair, 9 September 1941; La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 22 January 1942. Thirty-four little boys left for Château-du-Loir on 21 January 1942. 79 AMCB, 4H4.29: L’Ouest-Éclair, 22 February 1942; L’Ouest-Éclair, 3 April 1942; L’Ouest-Éclair, 23 May 1942; L’Ouest-Éclair, 2 June 1942. 80 AMCB, 4H4.36: La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, 12 February 1943; Mayor of Brest to M. l’abbé de Petitcorps, 4 October 1963. 81 AMCB, 4H4.25: ‘Incidences des principaux bombardements subis par la Ville de Brest au cours de la guerre’, 10 April 1946. 82 AMCB, 4H4.35: Major Habermass to President of the Special Delegation of Brest, 3 September 1944. 83 AML, 5H10.12: Poster to the local population from Prefect of the Nord, undated, but early September 1939. 84 ADN, 25W.38180: Head of Refugee Services for the Ministry of the Interior to all departmental refugee services, 27 November 1941. 85 AML, 5H6.6: Le Grand Echo du Nord, 17 October 1941. 86 AML, 5H6.6: Le Grand Echo du Nord, 28 September 1941. 87 AML, 5H6.6: Le Grand Echo du Nord, 19 November 1941, 20 November 1941, 18 December 1941; for more on the Fondation Guynemar, see Devigne, ‘ “Les enfants d’abord!” ’, p. 387. 88 AML, 5H6.6: Le Grand Echo du Nord, 18 September 1941. 89 ADN, 25W.38180:  Head of Refugee Services for the Ministry of the Interior to all departmental refugee services, 3 April 1942; AML, 5H3.19: ‘Recensement des populations des secteurs menacés’. 90 AML, 5H6.5: Extract from the Minutes of the Municipal Council of Lille Meeting, 14 December 1943; Extract from the Minutes of the Municipal Council of Lille Meeting, 8 February 1944. 91 ADN, 1W.1028:  ‘Chef gouvernement SIPEG’ (Laval) to Prefect of the Nord, 21 April 1944. 92 Carey-Trefzer, ‘The results of a clinical study of war-damaged children’, pp. 539, 541. 93 Barenbaum et  al., ‘The psychosocial aspects of children exposed to war’, p. 42. 94 A. Portelli, ‘Philosophy and the facts:  subjectivity and narrative form in autobiography and oral history’, in The Battle of the Valle Giulia:  Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison, WI:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 86–7.

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Part III

Explaining bombing

v 8 v

Explaining bombing to the public

Michel Thomas: There was propaganda from the Vichy government, although it wasn’t really from Vichy, but from the collaborationists, who tried to enrage the population against the British in particular, and against the Anglo-Saxons in general. Well that kind of thing, it never took off. For us, it didn’t translate at all into something that turned us against the British. Not at all. It’s important to re-establish these things, because people write stupid things, things that aren’t true. French people weren’t collaborators with Germany. We didn’t like the Germans! When a German walked towards us, we’d look the other way […] I wouldn’t have spoken to a German for anything […] I don’t remember very well [if they spoke of the air raids on the radio], but the radio in Paris, it’s important to be careful here, the radio in Paris wasn’t Pétain’s radio. It was the Germans’ radio. It was Jean Hérold-Paquis Claude Thomas: Yes, and Philippe Henriot, and Déat – Michel:– and Doriot, all of them. They were anti-Pétain. Be careful, don’t forget that! […] They were really rotten, real bastards, those people at Radio-Paris. They didn’t make an impression on the population – Claude: And even though we were young, we understood the situation perfectly. Was it because our parents explained it to us, or did we understand it by ourselves? I’m not really sure. I don’t remember that they lectured us about it. It seemed natural. Michel: We were at war. Against the Germans! Claude: Yes, yes, yes. We knew the difference, and we listened to the radio from London here – Lindsey: And did they mention the bombing of France? Claude: Oh, yes – Michel: Of course – Lindsey: Yes? What did they say? Claude: It was propaganda too, eh. Propaganda to reply to German or Vichy propaganda – so – We weren’t fooled.

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Explaining bombing Michel: German propaganda never took off. It was really very clumsy. They really weren’t good at it [laughing], they weren’t skilful at all.

Michel and Claude Thomas were the adolescent brothers from Boulogne-Billancourt who took a keen interest in the world of current affairs as youngsters, and seemingly as adults too. Their reflections on propaganda and public opinion are cut through with a strong persuasive edge. They are adamant that German and Vichy propaganda did not work on the French population. Again, they demonstrate broad awareness of the time, such as the names of broadcasters and collaborationists, who are no longer household names, but are well enough known to those with an active interest in the Vichy era. Perhaps Michel and Claude were this aware in their youth; perhaps they have both read a great deal about it in their adult lives. The point here is their emphatic denunciation of the effectiveness of anti-Allied propaganda. They wanted their audience – me in the first instance – to understand that whatever was said to condemn the Allies was rejected by the French. While professional historians may disagree, and archive evidence certainly indicates that many French people held anti-Allied sentiments, the Thomas brothers’ perspective should not be dismissed: it is an important narrative trope that permits the composure of personal, family, generational and national identity; it is a way of making sense of the past. Propaganda is a public instrument that aims to act upon the private individual, manipulating ideas, beliefs and ultimately behaviour. Sometimes the audience is alive to the manipulation, sometimes it is not. Poor propaganda bounces off its intended recipients, leaving them unchanged  – or unchanged in the desired way. In many cases people, including children, engaged with propaganda, accepting or rejecting the messages they received. The propagandists’ messages were subject to mutations wrought by competing information and the way that each individual processed them.

Anti-Allied propaganda The output of press, radio and cinema in the Occupied Zone was controlled by the German Embassy in Paris and by the Propaganda Abteilung, which received orders directly from Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.1 From July 1940, all regional newspapers were put under German supervision; the Paris press flourished.2 With more than five million radio sets in France, the airwaves also became a key battleground.3 Radio-Paris broadcast widely, making a star of militant right-winger, Jean Hérold-Paquis. v 168 v

Explaining bombing to the public With German financing, the station recruited talented broadcasters; it was pro-German, anti-Semitic, anti-communist and anti-Allied, yet its broadcasts were lively, and its transmitters powerful, bringing it a large audience.4 The French were also avid cinemagoers during the war. Filmed news in the Occupied Zone was produced by the Propaganda Abteilung and a Paris-based section of the Reich’s main production group.5 The Vichy government set up its own propaganda service, which vigorously promoted the National Revolution, and controlled and censored media content.6 From February 1941, when the fascist Paul Marion began to gain influence in the Propaganda Ministry, a programme of indoctrination began. However, quarrels within Vichy’s propaganda service restricted the development of a coherent policy. Marion lost influence when Pierre Laval returned to power in April 1942, the new premier placing his own men in influential positions. Censorship from Paris increased when the Germans invaded the southern zone in November 1942, and by 1944, as the collaborationists triumphed in the French government, propaganda became the domain of fascist Philippe Henriot until his assassination in June 1944.7 Until Henriot’s arrival, Radio-Vichy had lacked influence, perceived by listeners as rather dull.8 Filmed news south of the demarcation line, however, maintained some independence and was popular. But in August 1942 the German-run France-Actualités became the sole filmed news broadcaster across France, and it was widely disliked because of its pro-German sentiments. German propaganda had two aims:  first, to encourage support for collaboration by stressing its advantages to France, the benevolence of the Reich, and German achievements; and second, to stigmatise enemies:  Jews, Freemasons and communists, the treacherous Allies and resistance traitors.9 But how was bombing presented in all of this? Four themes are used to show the ways in which anti-Allied propaganda (some Vichy, but mostly German and collaborationist) made use of bombing: the British betrayal, the capitalist (Jewish) instigators of Allied bombing, air raids as criminal acts and the victimisation/martyrdom of the population. In the first instance, bombing could easily be used to discourage Anglophilia. The theme of British betrayal required a careful sculpting of history – from Joan of Arc to the Versailles Treaty, Dunkirk and Mers-el-Kébir, bombing was just the latest assault by a perfidious neighbour. This idea of betrayal was endorsed by Paul Marion, who stated in June 1942 that Britain was ‘striking cowardly blows at her former ally’, in order to ‘stop the national revival started by Marshal Pétain’ (rather v 169 v

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Figure 5  Anti-allied propaganda denouncing the RAF. The babies’ dummies that the airman holds are described as the ‘scalps’ he has taken. than any war-related aim).10 Betrayal provided vivid imagery, such as Vichy’s poster depicting Rouen in flames, Saint Joan burning at the stake and the line ‘Murderers always return to the scene of the crime’. In one leaflet, Churchill’s professed ‘old friendship’ and ‘deep sympathy’ for France were juxtaposed with bombsite scenes.11 The Allies were untrustworthy hypocrites, emphasised in the leaflet addressed to ‘Mums of France’, picturing an airman holding ‘Victory scalps of the RAF’:  a string of babies’ dummies (see Figure 5).12 ‘Facts’ were marshalled to the anti-British cause, with tallies of casualties superimposed on images of v 170 v

Explaining bombing to the public women weeping over coffins.13 Some leaflets castigated French anglophiles as unpatriotic: ‘Frenchmen WORTHY OF THAT NAME! When will you understand that when you defend England, you become the murderer’s accomplice?’14 All of this was reinforced by Radio-Paris’ violent hostility towards the Allies. One broadcaster in September 1943 inveighed against the Allies’ vindictiveness: ‘The Anglo-Americans needed compensation for the failure of their generals. They sought it at the cost of disarmed, occupied France.’15 The idea of the enemy bomber was extended to condemn the enemies of the patrie: those whom the right had termed the ‘anti-France’ including Jews, Protestants and Freemasons, as well as the fearsome spectre of socialism. Jews and the Allies were instigators of air raids on France, first, in ‘their hatred of Europe’ and the desire to ‘destroy all traces of its civilisation’; and second because of a capitalist drive to ‘DESTROY THE COMPETITION that French and European industry poses to England and America’. This leaflet continued ironically, ‘to avenge the persecuted Jews, the Royal Air Force is bombing military objectives in France: schools, hospitals, churches, homes’.16 Propaganda suggested that the bombers were Jews, they were supported by Jews and that they were furthering the aims of global Jewish capitalism. Wishing for the bombers’ victory was to wish for ‘total dominance of shady plutocracy, the City, Jews, Freemasons’, and thus a return of Blum, Mandel, and Reynaud ‘and behind them’, in a tortuous twist of logic, ‘Bolshevik revolution’.17 La France Socialiste warned that the Bolsheviks would capitalise on ‘a restless atmosphere, born of poverty and hunger’ in the aftermath of air raids.18 Anti-Allied propaganda tended to decontextualise bombing. Often, no mention was made of the Germans whatsoever. The newsreel shown after the Renault raid of March 1942 showed the factory only briefly, and the voiceover mentioned neither its name nor its activity.19 There was a similar emphasis in anti-Allied leaflets.20 Decontextualised, it was easier to portray bombing as criminal. Marion spoke of ‘the unity of crime of London and Moscow’; the Allies were labelled ‘murderers’.21 Press and radio insinuated that the Allies had bombed open towns and, commented La Semaine, ‘you look in vain for any military objectives’.22 Collaborationist parties were less sly, a tract of Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français bellowing the Allies’ intention ‘TO KILL WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THOUSANDS OF DEFENCELESS BEINGS’.23 Removing context opened a hole into which reporters could pour hyperbole at the expense of reason. This demonisation intended to unite the French in hatred of v 171 v

Explaining bombing the Allies. The visual media exploited ‘nauseating’ images such as the ‘terribly mangled remains of women and children’ to provoke emotional responses, delegitimising bombing by rendering it a criminal, cowardly act of cruelty.24 The final theme was the martyrdom and/or victimhood of the French population, which in Vichy’s propaganda chimed neatly with its Christian rhetoric of suffering, sacrifice and rebirth. Furthermore, with no French army fighting on the frontlines, civilian death had no equivalence: loss and sacrifice were positioned wholly behind the lines. So just like Vichy’s great heroine Joan of Arc, the French were sanctified by their suffering. The press told heartrending stories, like that of a woman trapped for thirty-eight hours, clutching her dead daughter’s hand.25 While Jean Hérold-Paquis’ broadcasts overflowed with violence, other media made use of shared suffering. In March 1942, an article about the parade honouring the victims of the Renault raid described the crowds ‘in fervent union’ paying ‘pious homage’ to the dead.26 It fitted Vichy’s purpose to emphasise the martyrdom of the French people. But alongside martyrdom ran victimhood: the language of mourning, images of grief-stricken, vulnerable civilians and the emphasis on the innocence of the dead, ‘victims of the RAF’, ‘victims of cowardly British aggression’. Collaborationist propaganda elbowed out Vichy’s promotion of suffering for a greater good, replacing it with a language of victimhood which drew together its themes of criminality, treachery and the Allies’ ultimate goal of destroying France.

Pro-Allied propaganda Propaganda that did not criticise bombing emanated from a variety of sources inside and outside France. Inside France, its messages were unofficial and disconnected when emanating from individuals pasting up posters, scrawling slogans on walls or making hand-drawn flyers, but more coherent when coming from resistance movements with clandestine newspapers. Bombing France, however, was not a major theme of internal resistance propaganda. It featured more prominently in propaganda reaching France from abroad. This too came from several sources. Perhaps 676 million leaflets were dropped on France by the Allies during the war, peaking in the last third of 1943.27 The other important medium was radio, dominated by the BBC. The French Section of the BBC was independent of de Gaulle, although the Free French had their own five-minute slot, ‘Honneur et Patrie’, each evening.28 While scripts could v 172 v

Explaining bombing to the public be censored, they were produced independently of the British propagandists.29 Content, then, was largely in the hands of French broadcasters although on occasion the British and Combined Allied military high commands took the microphone to issue warnings about bombing. The clandestine press in France used a positivistic Republican rhetoric of reason, logic and proof, the language of education, and the Christian virtue of truth.30 Newspapers liked to unmask the lies behind German or Vichy propaganda. The clandestine press did not condemn the Allied bombing of France, and sought to explain the military rationale behind the air raids.31 Airborne leaflets and the broadcasts of the BBC French Service used news from sources outside Britain (e.g., American or Swiss newspapers) and extracts from the British press to indicate wide and popular support for France. British propaganda to France had three aims: the accurate presentation of world news, negative propaganda condemning the Germans and positive propaganda about Allied victory and French courage.32 The BBC French Service provided entertainment, news and opinion in programmes targeting different segments of the population, such as women, railway workers, students and children. Although it made a virtue of truth, this propaganda still aimed to manipulate opinion and influence behaviour. There are thematic parallels between anti- and pro-Allied propaganda. British betrayal was replaced with the betrayal of French collaborators. Collaboration was emphasised as the main reason that France was being bombed. The BBC French Service quoted the French London newspaper France in the wake of the Renault raid of 1942, which stated that ‘collaboration has by no means removed France from the war’. Discussion of the Allies’ targets underscored the rationale behind bombing. Broadcaster Jean Oberlé told listeners on 5 March 1942: ‘Renault is no longer a French factory […] it’s a German factory where Frenchmen work.’33 A  British leaflet dropped on Occupied France which used reconnaissance photos to show the lines of lorries and the impact points of the bombs underscored his words.34 Similar aerial photographs were used in the RAF’s airborne magazine Le Courrier de l’Air to indicate targets, such as photos of the German warships in Brest’s port, to show evident bomb damage and to refute claims that bombs had fallen solely on houses.35 Responsibility for air raids on France, then, was laid at the door of the French government. A  BBC broadcast of 4 March 1942 condemned Vichy’s Minister of Production François Lehideux for betraying Frenchmen, having ‘put the Renault workers on the frontline of an industrial war’ while he cowered in his shelter.36 The BBC team criticised popular hypocrisy, stating v 173 v

Explaining bombing that Frenchmen could not clamour for bombing and then complain at its destruction.37 The resistance press was sternest in its treatment of betrayal. It made no concessions: if factory workers refused to sabotage their work, they were ‘responsible for their own destruction and the human losses caused by bombing’.38 The enemy was Germany; but it was Frenchmen who had betrayed France. Those depicted as enemies in the anti-Allied propaganda were declared loyal friends of France in its pro-Allied equivalent; the British were, after all, the ‘enemy’s enemy’ and on that front alone, a claim for friendship could be made.39 News round-ups in airborne leaflets and on the radio accentuated the ‘the free world’s true feelings of brotherly friendship’ for France.40 Historical precedents were used to prove that friendship. An American leaflet pictured the Statue of Liberty, and addressed itself to ‘the country which gave us “Liberty” ’. The Americans added that they were proud to be friends with France, as in 1917.41 The British asserted their constancy: ‘Allies and friends we were on 3 September 1939. Allies and friends we remain on 3 September 1942. Allies and friends we will be on the day of victory.’42 The Dunkirk evacuation was justified as having spared ‘your beautiful country from pointless destruction’.43 The clandestine communist paper L’Humanité told its readers to demonstrate their solidarity ‘to our Soviet, English and American allies who are fighting our common enemy’.44 A BBC broadcast by a British airman told French listeners that ‘all precautions that are humanly possible have been taken to reduce to a minimum the sacrifice of French lives’ during raids on French targets.45 Smiling American pilots pictured in the Courrier de l’Air humanised those demonised in the collaborationist press, while radio features such as a dramatic first-person account of bombing Berlin directed attention to the shared enemy.46 An article from the Spectator was dropped on France to show ‘that France is still seen as an ally by the British people’, and many broadcasts strove to demonstrate the similarities of civilian experience in both countries.47 Jacques Duschesne urged listeners, ‘think of those who were killed a year ago in English factories’:  suffering was shared.48 For the writer of a note found spiked on a statue in Lille’s Place Jeanne d’Arc, identifying the real enemy was easy: ‘If Joan of Arc, the great patriot, could come back to life, it wouldn’t be the English she’d kick out of France, it would be the Germans.’49 Pro-Allied propaganda also focused on context. The BBC’s daily news round-ups in French only ever mentioned bombing France briefly as part of a bigger exposé of the world at war. News broadcasts were careful to state the target, for example in January 1943, ‘American flying v 174 v

Explaining bombing to the public fortresses have bombed the submarine base at Lorient very heavily’.50 The intention was to emphasise the target: the base, not the town. It was part of a campaign against ‘the entire German war machine’.51 Workers learnt that the materiel they produced was being sent to the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front so bombing French factories was also helping their hard-pressed Russian comrades.52 The clandestine press, however, not privy to the Allies’ plans, and deprived of accurate information, gave less contextualisation: air raids were not condemned, but they were little discussed. Almost gleeful depictions of German suffering under the Allies’ raids helped to counter collaborationist propaganda that sought to minimise its impact.53 Apart from a big splash following the first Boulogne-Billancourt raid in March 1942, the French service at the BBC played down Allied air raids. But the Allies and their friends still needed to underscore the cruel necessity of air raids, and the unavoidable civilian casualties. An airborne RAF leaflet warned recipients that ‘We will aim as straight as possible … but some bombs must inevitably miss their mark’.54 Finally, pro-Allied propaganda refused to paint civilians as victims and martyrs. Not only were the French portrayed as being intelligently rational  – they understood why they were being bombed  – they were brave participants in the fight for liberation. Presenting some of the letters sent from listeners in France to the BBC, broadcaster Brunius repeated on air their ‘testimonies of reason’: the French, he said, were calm under the bombs.55 The population had to remain steady; British popular support was conditional on French resolve to resist. Perhaps influenced by the discourse of stoicism dominant in Blitzed London, the BBC French team depicted their compatriots as staunch and brave rather than as passive victims in a neutral country.56 War against the occupier was, it was said, ‘the desire of almost all French people’.57 The population was told in a military warning message to protect themselves as they would be needed later to fight side-by-side with the Allies.58 Until then, sabotage, ‘ceaselessly, to slow up production’, would be ‘in the long run, more important than the damage caused by our bombs’.59 Pride was bolstered, and bombed civilians became participants, who, when victory came, would stand alongside the winners.60 Attention was thus focused away from the idea of meaningless casualties. Duchesne told his listeners that he sympathised deeply with their losses. But in his sympathy he offered a hard choice: to be rid of ‘Nazi barbarism’, the French had to accept that ‘in war, there are innocent victims’.61 The French had to pay their share if they wanted freedom. v 175 v

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Public opinion, propaganda and bombing Nicholas Atkin described Vichy’s propaganda project as ‘doomed to failure’ by its ‘lack of understanding’ of national mood.62 The French State’s ideological intentions were indeed increasingly far removed from the harsh realities of daily life; its propaganda became less and less attuned to currents of mood, but instead dictated what people were to think. The problem was worse in the Occupied Zone. Nothing could mask the bald fact of occupation:  the enemy was in France, not across the Channel. For many, it seemed that displays of German sympathy towards bombing’s victims were transparently false.63 But to what extent did anti-Allied propaganda manage to influence public opinion? Certain contemporary evidence suggests that Allied raids were initially supported. Voices of criticism that might have indicated that anti-Allied propaganda had worked are muted. The French understood the context of the bombing, partly from pro-Allied information sources, partly from what they saw under their noses. In summer 1940, bombing was welcomed as evidence that the war continued. After a British air raid on Brest, a young woman called Suzanne Langlois wrote in her diary that ‘all the Brestois are rejoicing. “It was the English!” ’64 An escaped Frenchman told the British Foreign Office in 1942 that the French wanted to see ‘factories flaming’,65 while a letter to the BBC called for industrial targets to be ‘smashed to pieces’.66 Jean Guéhenno struggled to find critics of the first Renault raid: ‘No-one was angry’ and many celebrated.67 The Germans were infuriated by ‘applause and enthusiasm’ for bombing.68 The most frequently bombed populations seemed to be ‘filled with the best and most fervent sprit of resistance’. Target, deed and purpose were contextualised: these were ‘bombs of deliverance’.69 In late 1941, the Prefect of the Nord wryly remarked that ‘the English are still, in the eyes of the population, the “deus ex machina” who will rid the country of the occupier’.70 In the broader context of war, on the path to liberation, bombing was tolerable. Nonetheless, a surfeit of context could damage opinion. For example, part of the anger provoked by heavy raids in late 1943 and 1944 was due to the inevitability, now, of Allied victory. This bombing seemed superfluous. It also seems that people largely believed the Allies to be their friends. Early in the war, French people had ‘a tremendously high opinion of the RAF and expected them to do a good job’.71 In order to emphasise casualties, collaborationist propaganda mocked the RAF’s boasts about its own prowess, yet people had faith in the bombers’ skill (for a time).72 v 176 v

Explaining bombing to the public There were rumours of direct hits on German officers’ accommodation, sandwiched between French homes that remained unscathed.73 This friendly attitude explains the brave efforts to help downed airmen escape and the touching ceremonies for those who died. Yet despite ‘confidence in dear old England’, the case was not clear-cut.74 Many French people were much less favourably inclined after the Boulogne-Billancourt raid of March 1942. Some letters of condolence accompanying financial aid for victims called it ‘a cowardly attack’ or ‘cowardly aggression’. The word ‘cowardly’ negates an approved context and honourable friendship; ‘attack’ and ‘aggression’ mirror the vocabulary of the collaborationist press. Public opinion deteriorated still further in 1943. As war fatigue set in, living conditions worsened and terror and persecution increased, air raids intensified, now with the USAAF bombing from a high altitude. During the Transportation Plan campaigns of 1944, it became harder still to support such destructive attacks. Suzanne Langlois wrote in her diary in April 1944 that the Americans were a ‘race of bloodthirsty brutes who treat their allies like the Germans treat their enemies’.75 The heavy raids were taking their toll on public support. Identifying the enemy should have been easy:  the German presence made it difficult to forget why the Allies were bombing. The sight of German soldiers scuttling to take shelter as the siren sounded drew hoots of derision, and a collective pleasure could be taken in their suffering.76 As bombs fell on the Hôtel Continental in Brest with many German officers inside, a crowd assembled ‘to watch [them] roast’.77 Word got around, after the first Renault raid, that the bombs that fell on the factories were well-aimed British bombs; those that fell on workers’ housing were German bombs, sadistically targeting civilians. There was talk that the Germans forbade workers from leaving factories during the raid.78 Expectations based on past war led people to expect the Germans to behave cruelly, and so cruelty was attributed to them in the absence of fact. They were blamed for inadequate défense passive measures as they had appropriated civilian bomb shelters, used bomb shelters as munitions stores, sometimes failed to sound the sirens and did not install anti-aircraft guns in threatened locations, leaving Paris, it was said, defenceless.79 Having later installed a flak battery north of Boulogne-Billancourt, they were then blamed for attracting bombers.80 It was not a love of the British that drove people to throw stones at German soldiers assisting in the clear-up after the 3 March raid; it was a hatred of the occupier.81 While public opinion reflected pro-Allied propaganda with respect to context, friends and enemies, it diverged on victimhood. Pro-Allied v 177 v

Explaining bombing propaganda depicted the population as brave participants, accepting civilian sacrifices as other nations accepted military ones. Anti-Allied propaganda tried to convince French people that they were innocent victims. As thoughts alter rapidly, sometimes imperceptibly and not always predictably, identifying any kind of collective mood is always an approximate art. However, during 1943, stoically accepting bombing became much harder and a feeling of victimisation crept over bombed populations, with more and more venom directed at the Allies. There were shouts of anger at the ‘bastards’ who had destroyed the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near Lille.82 Other negative reactions suggest a change in perception. The bombing of Rouen in April 1944 prompted a vindictive response from Suzanne Langlois: ‘An eye for an eye! To hear that New York was burning!’83 The tide had turned. It seemed the Allies were lashing out irrationally. ‘No-one understands it,’ wrote Claude Pasteau in Lorient. ‘In people’s hearts, bitterness is stronger than anger.’84 Thus the idea of betrayal re-emerges. While allegiance did not change, and Allied troops were – usually – welcomed at the liberation, bombed populations felt ill-used, possibly betrayed, and became noticeably hostile. Yet this change cannot be attributed to anti-Allied propaganda. Rather, it came about because of a tangible, quantitative change in the scale of the assault, and the qualitative change in its counterpart, fear. Bombing formed part of the ‘single biggest collective phenomenon’ of war: fear.85 But anger at the bombers was never a collective phenomenon; the population remained broadly on the side of the bombers, as help for downed airmen demonstrates. German and collaborationist propaganda played on fear of the Allies, not the bombs, for political gain. Pro-Allied propaganda focused on the bombs themselves, contextualising their fall. The German presence in France was perhaps the greatest barrier to transferring hatred away from the occupier. Allied propaganda was more successful than its German counterpart, and helped convince the French population that they were never targets of the bombs, which fell as part of military campaigns within a larger war, and for their own liberation. People saw the Germans, not the Allies, as their enemies. Allied military and political leaders feared a dangerous backlash against them in 1944, which did not come; hostility to the bombers was generally short-lived, except among those bereaved by bombing. When the places and people they loved were destroyed, a contained, private anger grew, rather than anything more public or political. v 178 v

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Notes 1 C. Lévy, ‘La propagande’, in J.-P. Azéma and F. Bédarida (eds.), La France des années noires, Vol. II, De l’Occupation à la Libération (Paris:  Seuil, 1993), p. 49. 2 Lévy, ‘La propagande’, p. 58. 3 J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac and H.  Eck, ‘France’, in H.  Eck (ed.), La Guerre des ondes: histoire des radios de la langue française pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Paris and Lausanne:  Payot and Armand Colin, 1985), pp. 13–154. 4 Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 256. 5 B. C. Bowles, ‘ “La Tragédie de Mers-el-Kébir” and the politics of filmed news in France, 1940–1944’, The Journal of Modern History, 76.2 (2004), pp. 350–4. 6 Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 253–4. 7 D. Peschanski, ‘Contrôler ou encadrer? Information et propagande sous Vichy’, Vingtième siècle, 28 (1990), pp. 73–5. 8 Lévy, ‘La propagande’, pp. 52–4. 9 Bowles, ‘ “La Tragédie de Mers-el-Kébir” ’, p. 353; Lévy, ‘La propagande’, p. 49. 10 TNA, FO 371/32000: Reported in The Times, 4 June 1942. 11 ADN, 1W.4696.8: Leaflet, ‘Enfin, un succès anglais… mais un deuil de plus pour la France’, undated (c. 1942). 12 ADN, 1W.4696.8:  ‘Mamans de France ALERTE!!!’, 1943. All capitals are replicated from the originals. 13 ADN, 1W.4696.6: ‘Les paroles et les faits’, undated (after April 1943). 14 ADN, 1W.4696.6: ‘FRANÇAIS: Churchill libère la France’, undated. 15 TNA, FO 371/36038:  Alain Algaron’s 12.00 discussion, Radio-Paris, 3 September 1943. 16 ADN, 1W.4699.7: ‘Libération: distribué par vos amis de la RAF’, 1944. 17 ADN, 1W.4696.6:  ‘Aux Français qui n’ont pas encore compris’, undated (before December 1941). 18 BBC WAC (British Broadcasting Corporation Written Archives at Caversham), E1/705: 28–31 May 1944 (translated into English in original). 19 TNA, FO 371/31999: Gascoigne to Foreign Office, 3 April 1942. 20 ADN, 1W.4696.6: ‘Du bon sens’, 1943. 21 TNA, FO 371/32000: Reported in The Times, 4 June 1942 (translated into English in original). 22 TNA, FO 371/31999: Gascoigne to Foreign Office, 3 April 1942; also the leaflet ‘Les paroles et les faits’ stated that ‘Winston Churchill was the first to order the bombing of open cities’ (ADN, 1W.4696.6: undated (after April 1943)); AMBB, uncatalogued, La Semaine, 7 June 1942.

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Explaining bombing 23 ADN, 1W.4696.1:  ‘Vous êtes prévenus!’ undated (1942 or 1943)  (upper case in original). 24 TNA, FO 371/31999: Gascoigne to Foreign Office, 3 April 1942. 25 AMBB, uncatalogued La Semaine, 12 March 1942. 26 AMBB, uncatalogued, Toute la Vie, 12 March 1942. 27 T. Brooks, British Propaganda to France: Machinery, Method and Message (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 36–52. 28 Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 398. 29 Brooks, British Propaganda, p. 53. 30 O. Wieviorka, ‘La presse clandestine’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, 108.1 (1996), pp. 125–36. 31 Wieviorka, ‘La presse clandestine’, p. 127, cites, among others, an issue of Combat (‘Vous l’avait-on dit’, Combat, 1 September 1943) that challenged Vichy’s contention about the Allies’ motives, stating:  ‘The English have promised never to take our Empire from us.’ 32 Brookes, British Propaganda, pp. 68–9. 33 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Discussion’, 5 March 1942. 34 AMBB, 22J.1:  ‘Les usines Renault travaillaient pour l’Allemagne. Les Usines Renault ont été frappées’, 1942. 35 ADN, 1W.1373: ‘Partout où l’on travaille pour les Allemands la RAF doit frapper’, March 1942. 36 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Les Usines Renault bombardées’, 4 March 1942. 37 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Discussion’, 5 March 1942. 38 BBC WAC, E1/706:  Resistance-produced facsimile of collaborationist newspaper La Nouvelliste distributed in a clandestine operation to all vendors in Lyon, ‘no. 305, 31 Dec 1943’. 39 K. Chadwick, ‘Our enemy’s enemy: selling Britain to occupied France on the BBC French Service’, Media History, published online 3 February 2015, DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2014.991383. 40 ADN, 1W.4699.7: Le Courrier de l’Air, April 1942. 41 ADN, 1W.1373: ‘Au pays qui nous a donné “la Liberté” ’, undated. 42 ADN, 1W.4699.7: Le Courrier de L’Air, 10 September 1942. 43 ADN, 1W.4699.7: Le Courrier de L’Air, no. 2a, 1942; BBC WAC, ‘Reflexions de Jacques Duchesne’, 4 March 1942. 44 BBC WAC, E1/706, L’Humanité, no. 180, 18 September 1942. 45 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Raid de la RAF sur les usines Renault’, 10 March 1942. He spoke French in the original broadcast. 46 ADN, 1W.4699.7: Le Courrier de l’Air, August 1942. 47 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Bombardement de Berlin’, 18 January 1943; ADN, 1W.4699.7:  Leaflet reproducing translation of an article from the Spectator from 5 February 1943, ‘Les Alliés et la France’, March 1943. 48 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Réflexions de Jacques Duchesne’, 4 March 1942.

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Explaining bombing to the public 49 ADN, 1W.1369:  Chief Police Superintendent to Prefect of the Nord, 13 May 1941. 50 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Résumé des nouvelles’, 16 January 1943. 51 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Dépêche du soir’, 10 March 1942. 52 AMBB, 22J.1:  ‘Les Usines Renault travaillaient pour l’Allemagne. Les Usines Renault ont été frappées’, 1942. 53 BBC WAC, E1/706:  Resistance facsimile of La Nouvelliste, ‘no 305, 31 Dec 1943’. 54 TNA, FO 371/31999:  Text circulated by Bruce Lockhart (Political War Executive), 17 March 1942. 55 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Courrier de France’, 6 March 1942. 56 BBC WAC, E1/706:  Resistance facsimile of La Nouvelliste, ‘no 305, 31 Dec. 1943’. 57 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Bombardement de Renault: revue de presse’, 5 March 1942. 58 BBC WAC, French scripts, Col. Sutton, ‘AVIS No. 7’, first broadcast 29 December 1942, 21.30. 59 TNA, FO 371/31999: Text circulated by Bruce Lockhart, 17 March 1942. 60 ADN, 1W.1373: ‘Au pays qui nous a donné “la Liberté” ’, undated. 61 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Réflexions de Jacques Duchesne’, 4 March 1942. 62 N. Atkin, ‘Reshaping the past:  the teaching of history in Vichy France (1940–1944)’, Modern and Contemporary France, 42 (1990), p. 9. 63 C. Rist, Une Saison gâtée: Journal de la guerre de l’occupation, 1939–1945 (Paris: Fayard, 1983), entry for 8 March 1942, p. 237. 64 AMCB, 26S: Suzanne Langlois, unpublished diary, Vol. I, 2 August 1940. 65 TNA, FO 371/32000: Memo, noted by Spaeight, Strang, Cadogan, Mack and Eden, 22 May 1942. 66 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Courrier de France’, 6 March 1942. 67 J. Guéhenno, Journal des années noires, 1940–1944 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002; 1st edn, 1947), p. 244. 68 TNA, FO 371/31999: Hoare to Foreign Office, 17 March 1942. 69 BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Courrier de France’, 6 March 1942. 70 ADN, 1W.1586:  Prefect of the Nord, report on public opinion, 18 November 1941. 71 TNA, FO 371/32000: Ellis-Rees to Hoare, 8 June 1942. 72 AMBB, 6H76: Toute la vie, no. 31, 12 March 1942. 73 H. Amouroux, Les Vies des Français sous l’Occupation (Paris:  Libraire Arthème Fayard, 1961), p. 351. 74 AMCB, 26S: Suzanne Langlois, unpublished diary, Vol. I, 2 August 1940. 75 AMCB, 26S: Suzanne Langlois, unpublished diary, Vol. II, 21 April 1944. 76 Amouroux, Les Vies des Français, p. 351. 77 Florentin, Quand les Alliés, p.  32, quoting A.  Vulliez, L’Enfer de Brest (Paris: France-Empire, 1985).

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Explaining bombing 78 Rist, Une Saison gâtée, 16 March, 18 March 1942, pp. 238–9, 236. 79 In a telegram to the Foreign Office, Knatchbull Hugessen wrote that ‘the German authorities are much to be held responsible for the loss of life since the Germans neglected to sound the air raid alarms and had taken no passive defence measures’ (TNA, FO 371.31999: Knatchbull Hugessen to Foreign Office, 15 March 1942). 80 S. Kitson, ‘Criminals or liberators? Public opinion and Allied bombing in France, 1940–1944’, in C. Baldoli , A. Knapp and R. Overy (eds.), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, p. 289. 81 Florentin, Quand les Alliés, p. 52. 82 Florentin, Quand les Alliés, p. 283. 83 AMCB, 26S: Suzanne Langlois, unpublished diary, Vol. II, 21 April 1944. 84 Florentin, Quand les Alliés, p. 300. 85 J.-M. Guillon, ‘Talk that was not idle:  rumours in wartime France’, in S.  Kitson and H.  Diamond (eds.), Vichy, Resistance, Liberation:  New Perspectives on Wartime France (Oxford: Berg, 2005), p. 79.

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Explaining bombing to children

Thérèse Leclercq: I think I didn’t understand. I don’t think that a child can – I don’t know if – For me, they were the baddies. I couldn’t have said French, English, German, they were just bad men […] They were just the baddies. Bernard Leclercq:  As a kid, you don’t understand any of this stuff about English, German, bombing – Thérèse: No. Why –? What was it about –? How –? No. Bernard: Why? Why bomb us? We didn’t understand. That’s what I think. Me, I didn’t understand. As I told you earlier, how should I explain it? We were bombed by the English, people talked about the English, why are the English bombing us? When you’re a kid – why? […] You don’t understand: French, American, German, you don’t understand – Thérèse: Why, why? Why are people fighting, why, for what reason? Bernard: And if you get bombed, they say ‘They’re bad people’, and the day after you learn, from listening to your parents, they say ‘Look, the English are flying over! That’s great they’re flying over.’ But you don’t know why! You don’t know what for.

Thérèse and Bernard Leclercq were both very young during the Occupation, born in 1939 and 1937 respectively. Their consensual comments on their own understanding of the Allies’ motivations and of the context of the war more broadly underline the limitations of children’s understanding, as they see it. In clear contrast to the older Thomas brothers in Boulogne-Billancourt, Thérèse and Bernard, living in the Nord, described their ignorance. While the Thomas brothers narrated their adolescent selves as participants in the past, Thérèse and Bernard describe themselves as bewildered bystanders. Yet children were not seen by opinion-makers as wholly passive. They were of great importance to Vichy’s regenerative project, and the subjects and objects of its propaganda. But Vichy was not the only source of propaganda that sought to v 183 v

Explaining bombing shape children’s behaviour. The oral narratives do not show a great deal of interaction with children’s propaganda, or perhaps more accurately, interaction with children’s propaganda was not related during the interviews. Nonetheless, they do indicate some of the sources from which children gathered information, and suggest the extent of understanding, which proved important in how people came to terms with the Allied bombing.

Propaganda for children Children’s publishing declined in France during the war, with publishing houses placed under German control or subject to restrictions and censorship. Children’s comic production contracted because of paper shortages and the banning of American comics.1 The only successful new comic was Le Téméraire, a luxurious, pro-German product that benefited from the patronage of the Propaganda Abteilung; its competitors looked rather thin and old-fashioned in comparison.2 Of the books produced for children not all were overtly ideological. Many were escapist or animal tales, little different from publications before and after the war.3 More ideological were stories of exemplary lives, cartoon adventures in comics and adaptations of fairy tales.4 A  more formalised propaganda appeared in Vichy’s schoolbooks.5 Yet neither Vichy nor the Germans could rid the country of pre-war books and comics. Children’s books about the Great War, depicting heroic Frenchmen, women, children and animals fighting the hated Boches were abundant, and paper shortages prevented the replacement of all textbooks.6 A school broadcasting unit, Radio-Scolaire, had existed since the late 1930s,7 and Radio-Vichy’s entertainment programme ‘Bonjour la France!’ broadcast children’s features of a Pétainist bent until autumn 1941; after that, young listeners might have found something of interest on Radio-Jeunesse or Radio-Famille. On Radio-Paris, ‘Aunt Simone’ hosted a children’s programme that propagated a collaborationist message.8 Some French children may have accessed pro-Allied propaganda. While the difficulties of clandestine publishing made it impossible for resistance movements to consider publishing for children, the BBC French Service in London broadcast to children in France from summer 1941. ‘Fifteen Minutes for French Children’ (Le Quart d’Heure des Petits Enfants de France) was largely written by the Gaullist journalist Yves Morvan (known as Jean Marin) and by Miriam Cendrars (daughter of the writer Blaise Cendrars), who also worked with Georges Boris v 184 v

Explaining bombing to children at de Gaulle’s headquarters, Carlton Gardens. So while the Free French and the BBC French Service remained separate, the two main children’s writers were more closely linked to de Gaulle.9 Jean de Brunhoff ’s popular character Babar the Elephant was appropriated, becoming ‘Babar the Free French Elephant’, and there were songs, stories and plays, and messages from fathers in London to their children in France.10 Listening to the BBC was illegal in France; without a thoroughgoing analysis, it is difficult to know whether French children listened in regularly.11 The BBC’s popular ‘The French speak to the French’ (‘Les Français parlent aux Français’) programme was adult-orientated, although its songs, jingles and lighter-hearted programmes might have appealed to youngsters. Children’s propaganda that emanated from Vichy or collaborationist sources refused to deal directly with war. Bombing therefore was not contextualised. Vichy publications made oblique reference to war under the guise of a great storm, following which a benevolent patriarch united people to rebuild their idyllic society:  allegorical reference to 1940, Marshal Pétain and his National Revolution.12 In contrast, in the BBC broadcasts, war was constantly evoked. Those producing the children’s programme were as committed to truth-telling as the adult team were. If Vichy harked back to a glorious past, populated by heroic, pious and warrior men (Saint Joan being the exceptional female), Miriam Cendrars rooted many of her radio plays in the present. At New Year 1942, Jean and Françoise, the fictional child heroes of a serialised adventure story set in the present war, ‘sent’ their listeners a telegram, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction.13 Modern technology and weaponry interested Babar the Free French Elephant, and modernity edged into stories like ‘Cendrillon moderne’ (Modern Cinderella), in which our heroine is left to answer the telephone while her sisters go to a party with a Hollywood heartthrob, who eventually makes Cinders a radio star. While Pétain was endowed with magical, ‘fairy godmother’ powers in fairy tales adapted by Vichy, Cinderella’s godmother is her real godmother, offering practical solutions:  the message was that children should put their faith in real people and not in magic.14 While Vichy’s stories portrayed foreigners as dangerous outsiders, the BBC painted a global society, discovered by the child news reporters of the ‘Stratenfantinosphère’ serial.15 Penny Brown has seen a desire to efface the miseries of daily life in the escapism of French children’s fiction from this period, yet the BBC spoke directly of wartime hardship. At New Year 1942, children were told: ‘the last year was dreadful. The one beginning will undoubtedly be sad too,’ and when Babar worried in February 1942 that the Allies were losing, his v 185 v

Explaining bombing friend assured him that ‘it is going badly at the moment, but only so it can get better afterwards’.16 Bombing was also mentioned. In a special children’s edition of the ‘Discussion between Three Friends’, listeners heard that ‘last year, English children were in as much danger as their parents’ and that ‘many of them were killed’.17 Bombing Germany was evoked in Babar’s tale of a heroic carrier pigeon riding in a British bomber, which laid an egg on Germany as its contribution to the raid.18 A message from a French airman assured French children they were not the target: ‘We and our English comrades do everything we can to avoid your homes.’19 In contrast to Vichy and collaborationist propaganda, the BBC did not try to obscure what children could see for themselves, but reassured them that ‘it will all be alright in the end’.20 As Vichy and the collaborationists did not talk to children directly about the war, they could not indict the bombers, nor invoke British betrayal. Nonetheless, France’s enemies were luridly drawn:  British, Americans, Russians and, behind them all, Jews.21 Joan of Arc was a useful vehicle for Anglophobia. Jennings cites a version of the story in which English cruelty is emphasised.22 It cannot have been a giant leap to make the link to cruel Allied bombers. In cartoons and illustrated books, heroes were markedly Aryan in appearance; villains were often dark, with hooked noses. Vorax, a grotesque bogeyman, with the ‘Jewish’ features of the anti-Semites’ stereotype, plotted against the heroes in Le Téméraire; he was evil, his accomplices, decadent, corrupt and sadistic  – and English, American and Russian.23 The anti-Semitic L’Histoire de Doulce France et Grosjuif (‘The Story of Sweet France and Fatjew’), published in the Occupied Zone, depicted a Jew instead of a wolf in a Red Riding Hood adaptation.24 Yet the enemy was not always externalised. In Vichy’s tales, the French people were blamed for bringing misery upon themselves through their selfishness.25 Germans were rarely mentioned; the storm metaphor removed the need for them. Being clear about friends and enemies was a priority for the BBC children’s broadcasters – particularly as France’s ‘friends’ were dropping the bombs. Friendly countries were the ‘great free nations, and other countries, at the moment enslaved, but which refuse to bend to the enemy’s will’. Children were told to draw their Allies’ flags and learn their geography.26 Cendrars managed to tell Joan of Arc’s story mentioning the English only once; children were encouraged to emulate Joan – not her sacrifice, but her heroic combat to free France.27 France’s friends were not just other nations, but the animal kingdom and nature. Babar’s friends Squak the Canadian squirrel and Epiphanos the camel were Free v 186 v

Explaining bombing to children French supporters, and Bacchus the ‘Free French Dog’ sent a message across the Channel: ‘Soon all the dogs of France will help hunt down the Germans.’28 Babar assured children that the ‘offensive of the springtime’ would triumph over Hitler’s ‘Spring offensive’.29 Children were explicitly informed that their enemies were Germany, Italy and Japan who wanted to take over the world, and enslave its populations.30 Pétain was not mentioned, but Babar railed against collaboration: ‘Well, would you look at that! […] Isn’t it shameful? […] A photo of traitor elephants, collaborator elephants, elephants working for the enemy [….] I’m disgusted by it.’31 The elephants were carrying Japanese troops in Malaysia. Babar worried that perhaps French children were also collaborating. His friend assured him, ‘No, my little Babar, of that you can be sure. There are no French children who collaborate  – all French children want to be free.’ Terms such as ‘collaborator’ were thus explained, which could have affected the way listeners understood other information they accessed. With little allusion made to war, Vichy and collaborationist propaganda struggled to paint French children as victims. Martyrdom was easier, permitting a focus on purposeful suffering, a common theme in children’s publishing.32 Children were told to turn their backs on the material world and to lead a moral, spiritual life.33 To demand greater sacrifice seemed quite hard, however, given the extent of family separation and penury. For many, there was little to give up. The idea was that individual children could, and should, contribute, through hard work and suffering now, to a better future. They could bring about national regeneration. Yet nothing advised them about how to handle war. They were ascribed agency, but within the world of the unreal – the fairy tale, the golden idyll – not the real world. As war was openly addressed on the BBC, appeals could be made for children’s participation. In a war like this one, Duchesne told young listeners, ‘children are just like grown ups’.34 The appeal was not to build some vague future society, but to expel the Germans now.35 Children would suffer, but this suffering was active, for to survive it was to resist German dominance. Broadcasters did not hesitate to encourage children to chalk Vs and Lorraine Crosses on walls. Consequences were assigned to their actions: by drawing the Allies’ flags, ‘one day, you’ll see them flying for good on top of all the monuments in France’.36 They were told to behave for their parents’ sake, to stay united in friendship and that their actions were important: ‘France is counting on you to help your parents to get through these difficult moments.’37 Even ‘the smallest resistance’, Babar’s friend told them, ‘is helping us to win the final battle which will v 187 v

Explaining bombing bring victory’.38 Children were incited to be brave, bold, and patient, and they would get their reward at the liberation, when ‘you’ll be able to say that you helped to make it happen’.39 Suffering became a tool to inspire resistance; thus bombing could be better contextualised as part of war, and enduring it was part of resistance. Children’s actions were attributed importance, and some agency. This was mostly situated in domestic realm. Yet inciting political graffiti and participating in liberation placed them on the public stage. In wartime, children could act as Trojan horses, carrying ideologies home to parents. But did they? And could it work when public ideologies were at odds with each other, and with family beliefs? Atkin noted that children were sceptical about Vichy’s new schoolbooks.40 Like adults, some could identify the purpose behind the message, and spurned it. Yet pro-Allied propaganda faced the enormous problem of even reaching its audience. How many parents would permit their children to listen to an illegal broadcast?

Explaining to children: extent of knowledge The people I interviewed remembered better the propaganda designed for adults rather than that for children. Indeed, none had heard of the BBC children’s programme – but of course, my sample size was small and drawn from the Occupied Zone where listening to the BBC was more difficult. Children were influenced by public discourse about bombing, but explanations were given subtlety and shape within private contexts. The interviewees identified two main channels through which they learnt about bombs:  perhaps unsurprisingly, people and the media. Parents and teachers were important, although no one I  interviewed remembered a parent explicitly explaining bombing to them. Instead they absorbed what they heard around them. Bernard Leclercq (near Lille) said that what he understood was ‘the echo of what the grown-ups said’. Henri Girardon in Brest knew the German warships were the Allies’ targets ‘because you heard people talking about it’. Some parents gave opinions on bombing, but did not explain why it was happening. Was it that parents felt poorly informed? Some narrators felt the community was kept in the dark. Jean Labaune, bombed at La Chapelle, wrote that ‘we weren’t given the reasons why’.41 Some teachers helped form children’s understanding of current affairs. Max Potter’s (La Chapelle) schoolteacher told the boys not to worry as ‘soon they [female German auxiliaries] will be gone’ and ‘[the English are] coming, they’ll be here!’ v 188 v

Explaining bombing to children While there seemed to be a lack of deliberate transmission of information about bombing, this was not because families were uninterested in current affairs. Like the Thomas brothers in Boulogne-Billancourt, who plotted maps of the Allies’ progress, many children had followed the events of the war, and felt they had participated in it. Cécile Bramé and Andréa Cousteaux in Brest recounted with pride their small own acts of defiance in the face of German soldiers; as we have seen too, Bernard Bauwens and Robert Belleuvre participated in civil defence activities with their youth groups. Michel Thomas said that he listened to Radio-Paris and even read collaborationist newspapers: ‘I was outraged by them. But I read them nonetheless.’ This compulsion to learn, even from despicable sources, showed that accessing information was, in Michel’s words, ‘capital’. The Thomas brothers were not alone. Jean Caniot (Lille) listened to the radio ‘Every day! Every day!’ – or rather, he qualified, whenever the wireless set worked. He took notes from the radio, and cut out newspaper articles, sticking them into scrapbooks, which he showed to me. These children were active consumers of news, synthesising information, creating their own interpretations. Children were not just receptacles into which propaganda could be poured. They had cognitive agency, reacting and drawing conclusions from what they heard. Those – often older – children with an interest in current affairs sometimes heard radio broadcasts from London. The team from ‘The French speak to the French’ and de Gaulle’s spokesman Maurice Schumann were household names for the Thomas brothers. Andréa Cousteaux remarked that listening to the BBC was habitual in her house, but only the evening news, as it was so difficult to hear clearly over the jamming, and too dangerous to risk for long. German and collaborationist explanations of bombing in radio and cinema news were more accessible. Yet some families spurned them outright. Cécile Bramé said that if they wanted to know what was going on, ‘we wouldn’t listen to the French radio […] We didn’t listen to the Germans’. Radio could not be trusted. Some children were aware of the German camera crews filming in the rubble. Max Potter saw the nuns clambering through the debris of his sister’s flattened school on film-reel news, and Maurice Masse (Boulogne-Billancourt) recalled ‘having been filmed by a German officer while I was sitting on the broken remains of my mother’s piano’. Max recognised the significance: ‘The Germans really got as much out of it as they could.’ Yet Christian de la Bachellerie, in Boulogne-Billancourt, remembered little of bombing in newsreels. He remembered seeing ‘the German advance in Russia’ but reasoned that bombing ‘didn’t show them in a good light’, so it was v 189 v

Explaining bombing little shown. Christian’s contemporary consciousness was impervious to anti-Allied propaganda, and he has never doubted that responsibility for bombing France lay with the Germans. Christian was unusual, as most of the older narrators remembered – even if vaguely  – negative comments about the Allied bombing in the media. In Brest, Jean Pochart noticed that French newspapers sought to ‘channel resentment’; he described the tenor of their remarks  – ‘Look, see what they’re doing to you! They’re destroying your town!’ – emphasising the town as the target. Robert Belleuvre (Boulogne-Billancourt) remembered that ‘German propaganda’ played upon betrayal:  ‘You see what your Allies are doing?’ Christian Solet (Boulogne-Billancourt) recalled newsreels dwelling upon the duplicity of the Allies, ‘English and American bastards bombing us, who are coming – so they say – to liberate us!’ Serge Aubrée in Brest cited rumours that sowed seeds of doubt by asking: ‘Why aren’t you angry with the Allies?’ A critique existed, and was noticed by children  – again, older boys seemed more aware  – but did not describe themselves as having been open to it. First, it contradicted the message from home. For Jean Pochart’s parents ‘de Gaulle was a god!’ Belief in liberation was as solid as religious faith. Second, children knew that information was manipulated. Serge Aubrée’s father had witnessed the German detonation of the American monument in Brest, but news reports attributed its destruction to British bombs. Serge evidently trusted his father over the press. Anti-Allied propaganda had one enormous failing: its provenance. Christian de la Bachellerie said that ‘we hated the Germans, so we ignored them’. While these interviewees may have been reluctant to admit gullibility, or were perhaps ashamed at having believed collaborationist propaganda, the criticisms they make of the Allied bombing as adults, as we will see, show that they were not afraid to speak honestly in the interviews. It seemed that some of the narrators had been able, as children, to fit the Allied bombing into a bigger national picture, even if they were less clear about specific targets and their relevance. Yvette Chapalain, little interested in politics or war, said of the bombing of Brest, ‘I knew what the point of it was, of course’. Others were more explicit. Serge Aubrée commented that ‘we put up with the bombing by saying “they’re here to deliver us” ’. Jean Pochart was also resigned to bombing because of the goal: ‘We said “ah, well, we have to accept these bombs to some degree to because they’re for liberation”.’ These words echo the BBC French Service’s message:  suffering was a necessary evil. In several narratives, then, a causal line was drawn between bombing and liberation. Whether v 190 v

Explaining bombing to children or not younger children wholly understood what ‘liberation’ was, it seemed it would be ‘better than now’. This idea required sophisticated thinking; to delay gratification is a subtle cognitive skill, and for something so abstract, even harder to master. For some children, as Sturdee also found in Caen, the link between bombing and a future notion of freedom was too great a leap.42 But depending on age, knowledge, character, others could feel differently. Serge had but one desire: liberation. Thus when he and his father returned to Brest in 1944, he rejoiced: ‘now we’re free!’ Brest could be reconstructed, but not without freedom. Yet accessing explanations about who was bombing them and why was beyond the capabilities of other  – often younger  – children. Jean Labaune, bombed aged eleven at La Chapelle in April 1944, wrote that he had dedicated time across his adult life to trying to understand the raid, emphasising: ‘WHY? BY WHOM? HOW?’ Paul Termote said that at seven or eight, his reading skills were not well enough developed to understand what adult newspapers said about bombing. Madame Th and Yvette Chapalain were both adolescent girls when bombed; neither remembers having been particularly interested in outside affairs. ‘We weren’t interested in politics’, said Madame Th of her group of schoolfriends. Nor was she permitted to listen to the radio. Anything she knew about the war came via her father, thus with parental censorship. Yvette was wrapped up in her own life: ‘I went to school, I had my schoolwork, yes, for me that was it.’ These teenage girls were less preoccupied with the public world of war than some of their male counterparts claim to have been. In Michèle Martin’s home, newspapers and the BBC were ‘for adults’. Despite having been bombed four times, she said ‘really, I didn’t know what the factories were’. She did not know about Renault and collaboration. Once more, location played a vital role in children’s understanding of the context in which they were bombed. Pierre Haigneré, living in the calmness of the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near Lille, where combat, violence and the Germans had intruded little on daily life, barely registered war until the day he was bombed, aged eight: ‘We didn’t know what was happening, we said to ourselves “what’s that?” We knew there was a war on, but we were a bit isolated from it in comparison to some others.’ Pierre struggled to explain bombing at the time. Like Jean Labaune, he has since undertaken some research into the events of April 1944. Sometimes, location made bombing more explicable. For Christian de la Bachellerie and Bernard Bauwens who lived in Billancourt close to the factories, Renault’s activities were clear. Christian said local streets v 191 v

Explaining bombing were ‘chock-full of trucks made for the Germans’. Bernard said that this knowledge led them to conclude ‘the English were going to come and bomb here one day or another’. In some narratives, there was an inevitability about the first air raid, against which the outraged shock of the collaborationist press could make little headway. But as Thérèse and Bernard showed us at the beginning of this chapter, for the very youngest, bombing was as senseless as any other part of war. They could not contextualise it: there were ‘baddies’ or ‘bad men’, but even these categories did not seem fixed, the ‘English’ flipping between good and bad. The Allied bombing remained inexplicable, mysterious and frightening. There could be no explanations for what they had experienced as even basic concepts of war  – friend or foe  – were missing. Thérèse considered herself to have been strongly marked by her experience of bombing; without a means of making sense of it at the time, she remained saddened and exasperated by her traumatic memories. It is important to reiterate the evident importance of age in the processing and interpretation of frightening events. Age, as an objective criterion and a subjective phase of development, governed children’s access to information, their cognitive skills, their understanding of the world and their interest in it. While propaganda existed for younger children, none seems to have impacted upon these narrators. Gender may also have influenced children’s access to information: those here with a childhood interest in the war were boys who were more exposed to juvenile literature, games and toys dealing with war; it could also be the case that men were more reluctant to admit a lack of knowledge or interest in the events of the war. Furthermore, more men I spoke to had investigated the historical events of their pasts, so could talk of them with more precision. In these cases, there was a clearer sense of the interaction of memory and interpretation, which oral history can bring to the fore. This by no means invalidates memories; instead, it underlines that memory is a process of understanding the past from the perspective of the present, with a lifetime of experiences in between. Location must also be highlighted, first as the demarcation line affected which information and which types of propaganda one received; second, the BBC had better reception in certain areas; and third, particular parts of France were the specific targets of Allied airborne leafleting (although leafleting had little presence in the narratives).43 In places such as Billancourt where industrial collaboration was evident, explicit explanations were unnecessary. Elsewhere, such as at La Délivrance near Lille, there was little German presence and no understanding among children that they lived near a target. v 192 v

Explaining bombing to children Children were politically important as vehicles for ideological messages and as social actors within society. Propaganda from Vichy and German-influenced circles did not speak of bombing. The BBC’s broadcasting to children contrasted starkly, treating war, and even bombing, directly. Yet in the narratives, there is no evidence that children’s propaganda worked. While Serge Aubrée asserted ‘we were just children!’ to explain gaps in his own knowledge, sometimes we see that a grasp of current events was possible which permitted some contextualisation of bombing although bombing was not always accepted, desired or welcomed. Only rarely is passive victimhood a current within the narratives; the martyr idea is adapted in order to bring it into line with liberation from German oppression. In other cases, falling victim to an air raid was justified as playing an active role in French participation in the war. However, for those too young, too ignorant and too shielded to have understood why they were bombed, a lifetime’s searching has sometimes ensued. Anger and discomfort when discussing the Allied bombing were more evident in those less able to explain why they were bombed. With information comes control – or at least a feeling of control, of agency – and the ability to deal better with disturbing memories.

Notes 1 Halls, Youth of Vichy France, p. 168. 2 Brown, French Children’s Literature, p. 192; T. Crépin, ‘ “Il était une fois un maréchal de France…”: presse enfantine et bande dessinée sous le régime de Vichy’, Vingtième Siècle, 28 (1990), pp. 79–80. 3 Brown, French Children’s Literature, p. 161. 4 Proud, Children and Propaganda, pp. 20–2. 5 Atkin, ‘Reshaping the past’; E. Jennings, ‘Reinventing Jeanne: the iconology of Joan of Arc in Vichy schoolbooks, 1940–44’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29.4 (1994), pp. 711–34. 6 Atkin, ‘Reshaping the past’, pp. 9–11. 7 BBC WAC, E1/702/1: Delavanay to FSO, 5 December 1940. 8 A. Luneau, Radio Londres 1940–1944. Les voix de la liberté (Paris: Perrin, 2005), pp. 41–4; Crémieux-Brilhac and Eck, ‘France’, pp. 47–56. 9 BBC WAC, E1/702/2: ‘Replanning of responsibilities for Talks Programmes’, 17 May 1941; J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, La France Libre:  de l’appel du 18 Juin à la Libération (Paris: Gallimard, 1996); A. Luneau, ‘Des anonymes dans la guerre des ondes’, Le Temps des Médias, 1.4 (2005), pp. 78–9; J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, Georges Boris. Trente ans d’influence (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), pp. 119–20.

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Explaining bombing 10 BBC WAC, E1/702/2:  Extract from the Weekly Bulletin of the BBC Broadcasts to Europe, ‘Babar is now Free French’, 24 July 1941. 11 ‘Students and children’ make up 3.4 per cent of letters received by the BBC from France in May–June 1940 (M. Cornick, ‘The BBC and the propaganda war against Occupied France: the work of Émile Delavenay and the European Intelligence Department’, French History, 8.3 (1994), p. 348). In March 1942, Yves Morvan told children that he had received intelligence stating ‘you regularly listen in to us, and that more and more of you listen to our Thursday afternoon programme’ (BBC WAC, French Scripts, ‘Quart d’Heure des Petits Enfants de France’ [hereafter QHPEF], ‘Yves Morvan’s introduction’, 12 March 1942). Miriam Cendrars has remarked that she was later thanked by parents for the broadcasts (radio interview by T. Baumgartner in ‘Les passagers de la nuit: mythologie de poche de la radio #33 – Miriam Cendrars’, France Culture, 18 June 2010). 12 Proud, Children and Propaganda, p. 59. 13 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, 1 January 1942. 14 BBC WAC, French Scripts, M.  Cendrars, ‘Cendrillon moderne’, 27 July 1943. 15 Brown, French Children’s Literature, pp. 192–3; BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Stratenfantinosphère’ 4 March, 12 March, 19 March 1942. 16 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Message aviateur’, 1 January 1942; BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 1 January 1942, 26 February 1942. 17 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Discussion des Trois Amis’, 1 January 1942. 18 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, Miss Nathan’s introduction, 10 June 1943. 19 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Message aviateur’, 1 January 1942. 20 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 26 February 1942. 21 Brown, French Children’s Literature, p. 192. 22 Jennings, ‘Reinventing Jeanne’, p. 719, quoting R. Jeanneret, Le Miracle de Jeanne (Tours, 1942), pp. 10–11. 23 Proud, Children and Propaganda, p. 59; Brown, French Children’s Literature, pp. 192–3. 24 Proud, Children and Propaganda, pp. 25–7, 88. 25 Proud, Children and Propaganda, p. 59. 26 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Oncle Valentin’, 1 January 1942. 27 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Jeanne d’Arc’, 11 May 1944. 28 BBC WAC, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 30 April 1942. 29 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 16 April 1942. 30 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, Jean Marin’s news commentary, 1 January 1942. 31 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 19 March 1942. 32 Jennings, ‘Reinventing Jeanne’, p. 718.

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Explaining bombing to children 33 Atkin, ‘Reshaping the past’, p. 12. 34 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Discussion des Trois Amis’, 1 January 1942. 35 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, Yves Morvan’s Easter message, 2 April 1942. 36 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Oncle Valentin’, 1 January 1942. 37 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, Yves Morvan’s introduction, 12 March 1942. 38 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, ‘Babar’, 1 Jan. 1942, 26 February 1942. 39 BBC WAC, French Scripts, QHPEF, Yves Morvan’s introduction, 12 March 1942. 40 Atkin, ‘Reshaping the past’, p. 13. 41 Letters to Lindsey Dodd, 10 and 22 February 2010. 42 J. Sturdee, ‘War and victimisation through children’s eyes:  Caen  – Occupation and Liberation’, in Kedward and Wood, The Liberation of France, pp. 302–3. 43 Brooks, British Propaganda, pp. 166–79.

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v 10 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war

Max Potter:  Well, first of all, I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that there wasn’t any hostility  – not even on the spot when it happened  – towards the English or the Americans. When you think about it, Paris was really spared during the war. Look at Warsaw, London, Berlin. Secondly, the French didn’t really suffer during – apart from – and that was a bit like our punishment, but – well. For us, well, in my class at school, when I went in the day after [the raid of 21 April 1944 on La Chapelle in Paris], right after it happened, one of the other children said to me ‘I’m going to tell everyone that your father is English’. And on the radio there was a fairly talented journalist, a collaborator, called Jean Hérold-Paquis, and we heard him say one day ‘There are two thousand British internees at Saint-Denis, and 600 people were killed in the bombing. Why not do some physical reprisals?’ Well, you know, that – and I remember the day after that, because my father hadn’t had any news of us, having sent (and I still have it, you know – it’s in there [gesturing to a chest of his father’s belongings]), having sent a telegram to my father, because we could do that. It said ‘House standing. Family good health.’

Max Potter’s reflections on his experience of being bombed during the Transportation Plan campaign bring up a number of themes that will be followed across this chapter. Max’s father, it may be recalled, was a correspondent for the Daily Mail. He spent his war interned, while his wife, son and daughter struggled on together. They were worried about him, just as he worried about them. Here, Max reflects on the relationship between the French and the Allies. He considers them to have been seen as friends by the French population, but then paradoxically cites two examples, both highly personal, of the contrary. His comments also show him situating the French experience in a much broader view of the war. Of course, bereavement, injury and destruction are not nationally v 196 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war dependent: when the roof collapses, glass flies and fires rage, one could be anywhere. What we see with Max, however, is an interpretation of events that has helped him to understand what happened to him and to France, and has enabled him to compose a version of his own past with which he is comfortable by fitting disturbing memories into the wider patterns of history. Why be angry about what happened in La Chapelle when it was a drop in the ocean compared to what others dealt with? This relativisation is common across the stories.

The Allies: friends? Criticism of the Allies clearly emerged in several of the oral narratives. Did this criticism echo anti-Allied propaganda in matters such as British betrayal, the designation of enemies and the creation of civilian martyrs and victims? Propaganda does not act in a vacuum; people are subject to a variety of stimuli that contribute to the formation of opinion, and these subtle mutations are immeasurable. What emerges instead is a complex set of responses, sometimes rational, sometimes not, and not always coherent either. Oral history can sketch the outlines of the webs of thought, emotion and sensation that provide the impetus to act – or not to act. Such messy and contradictory elements of mind can be lost when history is flattened to a set of averages, as must happen if generalisations are to be made. While certain statements share the language of the anti-Allied propaganda, such as Robert Belleuvre’s comment that ‘the Allies came to visit death upon the civilian population’ (which seemed to ascribe intentionality), they do not always share the sentiment. Following the entry of the United States into the war, anti-Allied propaganda, while occasionally fingering ‘Roosewelt [sic] The Vampire’ and his ‘little flying apaches’ for insult, homogenised the enemy by using the fairly standard French label of ‘the Anglo-Saxons’ or ‘the Anglo-Americans’.1 Yet both then and now French people differentiated between them, and the comparison between the RAF and the USAAF is central to explanations of bombing. The RAF was seen as a friend of France; the position of the USAAF was more ambiguous. Earlier RAF raids seem genuinely to have been welcomed:  ‘near the beginning we were so happy to see the English coming’, said Michel Floch (Brest). Such raids were lighter than later ones, and in summer and autumn 1940 brought hope that the fight continued. The comparison with the Americans rested upon attributions of purpose, skill and the perceived ‘character’ of the bombers. Michel Thomas (Boulogne-Billancourt) emphasised that British v 197 v

Explaining bombing bombers ‘aimed’; Bernard Bauwens (Boulogne-Billancourt) said they took their time and came in low; Andréa Cousteaux (Brest) remembered they ‘would circle before dropping their bombs’; and Jean Pochart (Brest) said ‘they did everything they could to hit the target’. While the two air forces’ bombing techniques were largely down to different technologies, the Americans using the Norden bombsight that supposedly gave excellent accuracy from high altitude, it seemed as though the RAF cared. It was an emotional explanation: British bombers appeared to value French civilians and risk their own lives in the flak. Inaccuracies were dismissed as ‘a few gone astray’. American bombing was explained in two ways. The first was impersonal. Michel Thomas said that altitude caused the Americans’ inaccuracy. They bombed from 4,000 metres, ‘therefore, without precision’. Jean Pochart too blamed high-altitude bombers whose bombs ‘fell wherever they could’. Christian de la Bachellerie (Boulogne-Billancourt), who later fought alongside the Americans, saw this heavy-handedness as part of American vigour, a manifestation of their will to win. These explanations tended not to place blame on the bombers, but to explain inaccuracy through the tactics and technologies of war. The second explanation hinged on an emotive attitude that chimed in places with anti-Allied propaganda. Michel Thomas felt the British were ‘more respectful of human life than the Americans’, wondering if this was the result of their never having experienced a modern war at home. For others, American inaccuracy was explained by flawed character: ‘the Americans were savages’, said Andréa, attributing to them an aggression that cost French lives. Aggression was key to anti-Allied propaganda as it suggested criminal intent. Furthermore, if the British risked their own necks, what did the American comparison suggest? The conclusion, again echoing in the anti-Allied press, was that high-altitude bombing demonstrated cowardliness. In the département of the Nord, criticism was handed out more evenly. Jean Caniot described the bombing of Lomme in April 1944, where ‘the English dropped their bombs like the Americans had done’. Pierre Haigneré suggested a blurring of distinction in Lomme, where people complained ‘it was the English, the Americans that were bombing’. In other cases, people were angry with the British: the Leclercqs said that ‘we were angry with the English’. The RAF’s reputation was sullied. André Dutilleul said that ‘at the time, we thought they were bastards!’ But he asserted that this was a reaction to the circumstances of the raids, and neither long-lasting nor deep-rooted. In the Nord, then, attitudes were less v 198 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war coloured by nationality. This came as a result of the type of air raids most prominent in memory there, worst in 1944 when bombing was heaviest. It may also have arisen from a sense of betrayal by British friends. The Nord-Pas-de-Calais had a longstanding relationship with Britain, and there existed a more complex relationship towards these ‘friends’ whose ‘American-style’ bombing appeared so callous.2 In a few cases, the explanations proposed for the Allies’ choice of targets hinted at an underlying uneasiness with their motivation. Strong criticism was often tempered with a laugh in the storytelling, but suggests either the penetration of elements of anti-Allied propaganda, or of rumours, as well as a less than perfect trust in France’s ‘friends’. One interviewee asked insistently why the Allies had not bombed a particular factory, surmising: ‘English capital – so they never bombed it.’ He also pondered over why the Germans had bombed Citroën, and the Allies did not: ‘Citroën, that was Jewish capital […] It was English and American capital.’3 Attributing to the bombers more accuracy than they merited, Lucien Agache in Hellemmes suggested that the factory known as ‘The English’ was barely bombed ‘because they wanted to protect their capital’. Rumours tried to make sense of inaccurate bombing or feelings of victimisation. Whether these men felt any residual mistrust towards Britain and America was not apparent in the interview. Such explanations hinged on a view of the Allies’ capitalist self-interest, and contemporary criticism in this vein caused some consternation at the Foreign Office and among the Free French.4 So part of the population felt itself the victim of carelessness, cowardliness or capitalism. But acceptance of bombing suggests a more purposeful idea of victimhood: death was not a waste. Explaining casualties like this contextualised bombing within the wider war. The Thomas brothers’ reaction to my question about whether anyone criticised the Allies was emphatic: ‘No! No! Not at all! It was war!’ Christian Solet and Christian de la Bachellerie were more cautious, but their underlying resignation was clear. Christian Solet said that ‘people didn’t think it was quite right’, whereas Christian de la Bachellerie noted that ‘we couldn’t accept being bombed without some anger when it happened’. They felt resigned to being victims of war, not victims of their Allies. Most clearly, however, ‘we knew it was to liberate us’, said Josette Dutilleul in Hellemmes. This direct connection put two evils – occupation and bombing – into a hierarchy in which the Germans came off worse. In Brest, Yvette Chapalain, while lacking an adolescent interest in the war, stated that ‘we were aware that this had to happen to liberate us from the Germans’. This is a kind of v 199 v

Explaining bombing purposeful martyrdom. People spoke less with anger than with sorrow. With bombing linked to liberation  – and with anger permitted on the spot – it could be borne. Explaining the Allied bombing as a small part of a greater whole was part of a process of composure which neutralised anger and fear. Context was important, but so too was a real faith in France’s ‘friends’. Yvette Chapalain admitted that ‘when all’s said and done, they were, after all, allies. They were the Allies.’ Jean Caniot (Lille) said that ‘patriots’ knew that ‘the intention wasn’t to martyr the population’. Henri Girardon thought that the Allies bombed the arsenal in Brest on Saturdays because workers had a day off. People believed that they were not targets. Knowing that they were not being – and had not been – victimised could have a positive effect on how they explained bombing; although as I have remarked elsewhere, this could also inhibit the expression of traumatisation. Nonetheless, some found ways to ‘excuse’ inaccurate bombing. Sonia Agache (Hellemmes) defended the bombers by comparing the precision of military aviation then and now, and by remarking on how frightened they  – the airmen  – must have been. Josette Dutilleul felt great pity for the young airmen, and for their mothers. Even Édith Denhez, whose brother was killed in Cambrai in 1944, said that, having later watched interviews with bombers, she knew that they ‘they weren’t happy about what they did’. She could resign herself to the casualties because ‘that was their job. It was awful, but they had to beat the enemy.’ Her reasoning allowed her to accept her brother’s death as unintentional, part of a wider war, and regretted by the bombers. Contemporary sympathy for Allied airmen was also clear. Josette Dutilleul described her anxiety at seeing a bomber caught in the searchlights with anti-aircraft guns firing at him. Max Potter mentioned watching two parachutists escape a burning plane over Paris. One caught fire as he descended, and the crowds gasped: ‘There wasn’t any hatred, do you understand?’ In Brest too, Andréa Cousteaux was upset when a plane was caught by the searchlights; ‘the poor plane, and well, oh, we wept and wept’. Many children were convinced of Allied friendship, and the assistance given to Allied airmen to escape France is testament to a wider sympathy.

The Germans: enemies? While liberating France from German occupation was understood as the underlying aim of bombing, the attitude towards the Germans could v 200 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war be mixed. The daily accommodations that grew from living side-by-side with Germans meant that some of the impulse towards liberation from a hated oppressor – the most convincing explanation for being bombed – could be lost. Nuances in relationships with local Germans emerge which are easier for those who were children – with no responsibility for collaboration – to articulate. Some children struggled to see local Germans whom they knew quite well as objects of hatred. Josette Dutilleul said, ‘For me, they were just men. That’s all.’ The German railway workers brought in to oversee French railway workers in Hellemmes were ‘people like us’; her husband agreed, ‘they were railwaymen, they weren’t soldiers’. Others made the distinction between those they knew and those they feared. Henri Girardon in Lambézellec spoke of military conscripts on one side, and the SS and parachutists on the other. The latter were cruel fanatics (Madame Jean-Bart termed them ‘murderers’), the former, ordinary men. Some parents had German acquaintances with whom they listened to BBC broadcasts. Jean Denhez in Aulnoye spoke of ‘good family men’ who gave him sweets. With this conditional friendliness towards particular men, the knowledge that Allied bombers passed overhead to bomb Germany aroused mixed emotions. While Bernard Leclercq said, ‘we were pleased to see them fly over’, other children received attention from German soldiers that developed their understanding of the war. Danielle Durville in Boulogne-Billancourt remembered a German soldier sobbing, holding her hand. She resembled his daughter, recently killed in an air raid. As a boy, Henri Girardon watched the German who lived next door; ‘he was holding some photographs and crying’. The man’s wife and two children had been killed by Allied bombs. When the aggressors were humanised, the sharp line that propaganda had drawn between friends and enemies was blurred. More usually, however, the Germans were depicted as the enemy, underscoring so much of how bombing was explained. This is particularly evident in the way that blame for destruction is displaced away from the Allies. In Hellemmes, people were angry at inaccurate bombing, but it was les Boches against whom opinion railed as, remembered Thérèse Leclercq, everyone said ‘it’s because of them that our houses are wrecked’. In Lille, Bernard Lemaire agreed: ‘People criticised the English a bit for their bombing, but mostly it was the Germans.’ The desire to shift blame onto the Germans is logical within the wider context of war, as well as a product of hatred. In Hellemmes, many houses there were flattened v 201 v

Explaining bombing ‘not by the Allies – it was a V2 that crashed there’ in September 1944. Destruction by an enemy V2 was easier to comprehend than destruction by stray but ‘friendly’ bombs. In Brest, it was widely held that the Germans did as much damage during the siege as the Allied bombs, using flamethrowers to destroy civilian houses; and even if not quantitatively, this appeared to be qualitatively worse because it was maliciously directed at civilians. Yves Le Roy said it was ‘vengeance’; for Andréa Cousteaux, it was ‘to punish us’. Thus the destruction of Brest is partly attributed, in present-day local interpretations, to the more recognisable enemy: the cruel Germans. This explanation of bombing places it favourably in comparison with Nazi aggression; it is a version of the past that has been composed to be emotionally – if not factually – ‘true’. Friends and enemies were more difficult to define than propaganda intended. On-the-spot recriminations about casualties were vociferous; but they rarely endured when liberation was evoked. Suspicions about economic motivations could introduce a bitterness that sullied friendship. However, the Germans were not clear-cut enemies either, and German anxieties were picked up on by French children. In one case, friends and enemies switched position entirely. Édith Denhez explained: We hated – I know it’s not nice to say – the English, the Americans a lot more, those who killed our brother. Them  – we couldn’t pardon them. That’s how it was with my mother. They were worse than the Germans. She couldn’t bear the Germans at first, but afterwards – no. Because her life was ruined.

It is easy to see that families of French people killed by Allied bombs would find pragmatic, contextualised explanations for ‘friendly’ Allied bombing hard to accept.

Bombing and the wider war I am often asked whether it would not be ‘better’ to work with accounts collected much closer to the events, presumably because of a concern that ‘truth’ may have been obscured by the passage of time. My response is always that the passage of time interests me too; the multichronic nature of oral history – then, now and everything in between – is one of its strengths because it links clearly the present and the past. By looking at the narrators’ present-day explanations of the Allied bombing, we can understand something of its meaning over time. Pro-Allied propaganda tried to situate the bombing of France inside the wider war, and v 202 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war anti-Allied propaganda obscured it. The interviewees, however, tended to situate bombing inside their own war, in a ‘hierarchy of fears’ or a ‘hierarchy of hardships’, as well as in relation to other people’s wars, suggesting a ‘hierarchy of victims’. Such explanations of bombing may in part account for its low profile within histories of the Occupation, as it is often discussed in relation to more well-known phenomena understood to be ‘worse’. Bombing is crowded out, creating, for those who did have distressing experiences, a dead-end for memories which do not chime with wider public discourse. Childhood memories of bombing are vivid, yet bombing was only one of many hardships. Given my research interests, I had forced the focus of the interviews onto bombing, but narrators were keen to speak of other trials they had undergone. Michel Thomas was not unusual when he said that his family’s main preoccupation ‘was eating’; Christian Solet, also in Boulogne-Billancourt, also remembered that food was ‘the main thing’. Many interviewees explained how their parents supplemented meagre rations, and tried to divide the family’s resources fairly. Children longed for food, and juvenile malnutrition was indeed a serious problem. The cold was also significant. Michel Thomas remembered studying in gloves and an overcoat, while Jean Caniot in Lille said that ‘the worst memory for me is of the cold’. For Lucien Agache (Hellemmes), the worst thing to endure was ‘having been deprived of your parents’, his mother having died, and his father having been mobilised. Danielle Durville’s father was a prisoner of war for five years and his return home to Boulogne-Billancourt was ‘a shock’ for his daughter. For Josette Dutilleul (Hellemmes), the traumatic sights of the 1940 exodus left the deepest scar, while for Christian Solet it was the sight of a corpse dragged out of the Seine three days after the liberation of Paris: a woman whose hair had been shaved off, with ‘a hole in her head’. Being afraid of Germans was common. Serge exclaimed: ‘what a fear we had of the Germans!’ while Lucien Agache remarked upon ‘those people in uniforms who frightened us’. Finally, for several of the interviewees, a further hardship endured during war was ‘all the restrictions on your freedom’ (Lucien Agache) resulting from ‘being occupied by a foreign army’ (Michel Thomas). So bombing was measured against different wartime ordeals. In many cases these had a link to bombing: cold and hunger were exacerbated by supply difficulties created by bombing; they were also tangible evidence of German economic exploitation, justifying bombing as an end to occupation. Liberty would be restored, and frightening soldiers gone, when the Germans were kicked out. If the Nazis were defeated, fathers would v 203 v

Explaining bombing return from prisoner of war camps. When individuals experienced these ‘worse’ hardships, explaining bombing as means to end them could make it tolerable. Bombing is thus constructed in memory as a stage on the road out of cold, hunger, fear, separation, restriction and occupation. Not only do adult narrators situate bombing within their own war, but they place it into a relationship with other people’s wars. This way of explaining bombing comes from knowledge gained subsequently. Making a frightening experience relative like this enables them not to dwell on feelings of victimisation; if worse happened to others, then what is there to complain about? Disturbing memories are not permitted to stagnate. Yet people also deny themselves the opportunity to recognise the impact of these events. The labelling of one hardship as ‘worse’ than another can diminish very real emotional damage, giving individuals a sense of dissatisfaction with their own memories, and with national and international stories of war and suffering. In his study of Australian soldiers’ memories of the Great War and the way that public representations of the Diggers have developed, Alistair Thomson found that when private memories and public representations diverged, his interviewees’ stories became fragmented, full of unresolved tensions and contradictory identities. Composure was constantly undermined.5 The repeated weighing of memories of bombing against other experiences, the need to find positive explanations for it and to play down lasting negative effects may derive from that part of national memory of the period that has left people bound up with guilt and shame. People who did not experience a direct or close hit did not consider themselves to be victims of bombing; nor could they consider themselves participants – through suffering – in liberation. This affected their perception of bombing, and the bombers, both then and now. Christian Solet (Boulogne-Billancourt) said that ‘those families who had deaths because of the bombing, perhaps they’d be bitter’. Henri Girardon (Lambézellec) identified his attitude towards friends and enemies with his family’s survival: ‘If my father had been killed by the Germans or by an air raid, I probably wouldn’t have the same perspective.’ Jean Caniot (Lille) said that while his parents tolerated the Allied bombing, ‘of course, people whose houses were destroyed – they weren’t happy’. Sonia Agache (Hellemmes) agreed that proximity to tragedy affected memory. People, like her, ‘who didn’t have any deaths in the family, I think they forget more easily’. Like the majority of French people, Sonia’s family was not bereaved by the Allied bombing; thus Allied air raids were less prominent in memory, which was dominated by other hardships. These perspectives illustrate v 204 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war the way in which ordinary people experience political events: ultimately, the wellbeing of those upon whom they depend materially and emotionally shapes how such events are lived and remembered. The narrators also weighed their own experiences of bombing against those of people elsewhere. Michèle Martin (Boulogne-Billancourt) said that English children must have felt just as scared during the Blitz, and Édith Denhez (Cambrai) remarked that ‘England really suffered’. Michel and Claude Thomas (Boulogne-Billancourt) mentioned ‘London during the V2 era’, and the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden, saying that the French experience was nothing in comparison. When the bombing of France is compared like this, criticism could appear self-indulgent. Yet those who had traumatic bombing experiences in France, losing home or family, undergoing multiple heavy raids, being separated from families, have also lost the space in which to speak about distressing childhood events. Bombing was not seen as a specifically ‘French’ problem; other countries had it worse; easier, then, to concentrate on what is known to be specifically ‘French’ within the dominant story: collaboration and resistance. It was quite common for interviewees to link their own experiences of bombing, and of hardship more generally, to the persecution and then deportation of Jews from France. Michel and Claude Thomas had witnessed round-ups of Jews and were aware at the time that several of their parents’ business associates had disappeared. In Brest, Serge Aubrée said that he was not used to anti-Semitism, but a trip to Paris opened his eyes to the abuse of some of his classmates. Others did not speak of anti-Semitic activity during the war. Yet when asked to reflect on how bombing had affected them, made reference to what they had subsequently learnt about the fate of France’s Jewish population. People found it hard to explain what had happened to themselves without reflecting on the consequences of French collaboration, and personal experiences were frequently tempered. For Serge, whose Parisian Jewish classmates were deported, their memory, he said, ‘haunts me. It haunts me.’ What happened following their deportation only emerged, for Serge, after the liberation. Collaboration hangs heavily on childhood memories of non-Jewish French people; while they experienced the fear and reality of bombing, hunger, cold, deprivation and separation, they were spared persecution and deportation. It is a powerful and important distinction to make; yet there is a danger that memories of childhood fear and suffering could be thus written out of histories of war in France. Within this ‘hierarchy of victims’, one whose home was destroyed by an ally’s bomb v 205 v

Explaining bombing ranks ‘lower’ than one who was a deliberate victim of persecution; thus, certain explanations of the past have acquired a greater validity within public discourse. It is understandable that childhood survivors of the Allied bombing do not wish to appear to complain about what they went through; yet if experience is denied a voice, our understanding of the past can only ever be partial. Children, and the adults they became, explained bombing as part of a military campaign that would end in liberation, as well as a component part of war and hardship. They were victims of bombing, but it was an active kind of victimhood: many were able to allocate some kind of logic to the bombing. Thus in explanations of bombing, anti-Allied propaganda which intended to make the French feel victimised by so-called allies did not succeed; however, the accusation that the Allies had an eye to their own economic interests did not fall on deaf ears. The lines between friends and enemies were not always distinct, with even Cécile Bramé admitting of the Germans, ‘some were quite nice to you’. It is clear in several narratives that explaining bombing adequately to oneself could take many years. For Édith Denhez, whose brother was killed, time and adult comprehension brought Jacques’ death into perspective as a very sad, small part of a world war. Not everyone who had lost a relative might be as free from bitterness as Édith appeared to be; perhaps it is in her nature to be optimistic, perhaps she was reacting against the destructive power of her mother’s grief. Explanations for bombing were shaped multichronically:  at the time, across time and into the present – even into the interview and beyond, as my contact with some narrators continued. In the struggle for liberation, victimhood became active, closer to a kind of martyrdom, or it was subsumed under the waves of collective shame brought about by French collaboration. Bombing could be seen as ‘a kind of punishment’, as Max Potter suggested. Of course, much depended on location, family, age and disposition, but in numerous cases, the narrators remarked that bombing was clearly not the worst thing that happened in France, and the bombing of France was certainly not the worst thing that happened in war. Contrary to Henri Girardon’s warning, there was little tendency for people to play the victim. Not having been persecuted, people felt unentitled to claim victimhood. The Holocaust was rejected as consonant with personal experience, and there was recognition that acts of terrible persecution were more destructive, that suffering is relative and victimhood is not universal. Children’s experience of being bombed by the Allies was pushed down the scale, which helps to v 206 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war explain its relative absence in public histories of the Second World War in France. The Allied bombing was therefore explained by various people in various ways at various times. It was used by propagandists of all stripes to try to alter the attitudes of the French population. Vichy and German propaganda focused on bombing a great deal, but said little about its place in a wider war, while pro-Allied propaganda talked a lot about the war but little about bombing; both foregrounded what was most useful to them. While the Allies sought to create a belief that bombing would lead to freedom, and to foster friendliness towards the bombers by emphasising their concern for French civilians, anti-Allied propagandists aimed to attach bombing to the ‘anti-France’: Jewish/capitalist/Bolshevik forces bent on the destruction of France and Europe. Pro-Allied propaganda portrayed bombing rationally, with hope for the future, and faith in the bombers’ intentions; its opponents wished bombing to be viewed emotionally, with fear and hatred. Propaganda sought to inspire resistant activity, or active collaboration. Propaganda assumes agency on the part of its recipients. It assumes they can and will act in response to its message. In many cases people could, and did, decide whether or not to accept the message they received. But we cannot assume that because propaganda existed it worked. Propaganda’s success depends on whether it can persuade, convince, cajole or deceive people to follow its intended path. Behavioural change is difficult to effect, especially when the values, beliefs, attitudes it seeks to alter already exist in contrary form. Jowett and O’Donnell note that propaganda will rarely succeed in changing a behavioural response that is triggered by an emotion.6 Thus the anger that inspired anti-Allied shouts of ‘bastards!’ following air raids is not a behaviour that propaganda could change. But an attempt to transfer the pre-existing hatred for Germans onto the British when a broadly Anglophile attitude was the norm was unlikely to succeed. It is interesting to note that, like adults, children were endowed with agency by propagandists. It was assumed that they could and would act, and that their response mattered, now and for the future. The writers of the BBC French Service children’s programme explained to children that they had influence in the adult world, specifically in the circles of people closest to them, but with repercussions into broader society as they stood united with friends and gave strength to those more active in the public world. Propaganda pulled children into the public sphere. Some, in their consumption of information, engaged actively with it. The Thomas v 207 v

Explaining bombing brothers and Jean Caniot absorbed and processed what they heard and read. For others, explaining bombing was more difficult. Lucien Agache attempted to articulate how he had felt: We had fear in our bellies when the air raids happened. I  can’t say that I thought well of those people who were bombing us. Afterwards, perhaps when I got a little older, and people started to speak about liberation – and besides, in our neighbourhood, we didn’t see many Germans anyway.

Lucien’s reactions demonstrate the extent and limit of explanations. Bombing created fear, which made him dislike the bombers. He says nothing of nationality, allies or enemies, hatred or betrayal. No reason for bombing, no mention of target, is given. Later, he ascribes himself a greater ability to explain it, partly through age and partly because liberation felt closer. Yet the idea of liberation was complicated as he had had little contact with Germans. For some children, concepts of enemy and friend, and the geopolitical context were blurred and partial at best. In cases such as Lucien’s, the public world made a physical and emotional impression, but there was little understanding of causality. Two broad tendencies appear. First, an impervious group of people who seemed less affected by propaganda. Either it did not reach them, or they could not understand it. They responded more to the concrete events in the public world around them. The sights and sounds of bombing made them afraid; they feared for themselves and for those they loved, and they detested whatever had created that fear. There was no contextualised understanding of air raids, only a response to things directly affecting the personal environment. This group contained the younger, less mature, more shielded, less interested children. It was also within this group that satisfactory explanations for childhood ordeals were less well developed into adulthood. The second group was information porous. These children had access to, and accessed independently, information about public world events, processing it to forge their own interpretations. They broadly shared the views of the adults who surrounded them, and who influenced – deliberately or otherwise – their understanding of current affairs. They could attribute purpose to bombing rather than seeing it as a personal attack. In this group, we see evidence of children’s agency in the past: they sought information and engaged with it, organising it into maps and scrapbooks. These individuals were active members of society, at the micro-level, contributing to the larger dynamic of consciousness that moved the populations towards a dominant collective behaviour: ultimately rejecting the Germans and accepting the Allies. v 208 v

Friends, enemies and the wider war In February 1943, Jean Hérold-Paquis harangued the USAAF over the airwaves on Radio-Paris. Bombing, he said, had scarred France’s youth, who carried on their shoulders ‘thousands of coffins for the thousands of dead that the English and you have buried under the ruins of our villages and our towns’. Children’s minds, he said, remained polluted by the ‘horrors of tragic nights and […] the acrid smell of blood’.7 He was right that bombing would leave lasting traces on young people. But the attempt to stir up anger and hatred against the Allies was misguided. For French youth were also marked by other emotions: anger and hatred against the Occupier; love for those they were separated from, whom they lost in German reprisals, repression and persecution; hope for better times; and later, the shame of French collaboration. Hérold-Paquis tried, and failed, to change an emotional response to the Allied bombing. His attitude was wide of the mark for many whose attitude is so often reduced to a shrug and a sigh: ‘It was war.’

Notes 1 ADN, 1W.4696.6: ‘Vive la Liberté… de mourir’, undated. 2 Cobb, French and Germans, pp. 45–8. 3 When the initial list of industrial targets was drawn up in March 1942, Citroën’s Quai de Javal plant, quite close to Boulogne-Billancourt, was not on the list. Foreign Affairs minister Anthony Eden had objected to an attack because ‘the Citroën works are in a very densely populated area, could be costly in terms of civilian life’ (TNA, AIR 19/217: Eden to Sinclair, 16 March 1942; Sinclair to Eden, 19 March 1942). However, by July 1942, the Citroën plant was on the list, Eden having agreed to a direct request by Churchill, on condition that strict precautions concerning visibility and accuracy were enforced (TNA, AIR 19/217: Churchill to Sinclair, 16 July 1942; Churchill to Eden, 17 July 1942; Bottomley to Harris, 20 July 1942). The interviewee quoted here asked not to be associated with these comments, which he worried might be taken as anti-Semitic. I felt they were not (although I cannot know the feelings that underpinned the words); they seemed to me to be a recognition of the Germans’ anti-Semitic association of the factory with Jewish capital. I  point out his wariness here as this fear of even broaching some subjects may well be preventing a clear and full understanding of the past. 4 TNA, FO 371/32000:  Cuswell to Speaight, 7 April 1942; TNA, FO 371/32000:  Note about bombing Le Creusot, 31 May 1942, minuted by Hankey, 2 June 1942.

v 209 v

Explaining bombing 5 Thomson, Anzac Memories, pp. 4–11. 6 G. S.  Jowett and V.  O’Donnell Propaganda and Persuasion, 4th edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), p. 48. 7 J. Goueffon, ‘La guerre des ondes:  le cas de Jean Hérold-Paquis’, Revue d’histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, 108 (1977), pp. 39–40.

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Evaluating bombing: a conclusion

Édith Denhez: And then, well, they buried my brother. My father came back too. They buried my brother. They’d been looking for his body for several days. After that, they buried him. Time passed, and the bombs continued, and we were still in the village. Then my mother said: ‘Well, we should really go and get some of our clothes from home, shouldn’t we.’ So my father, he told me afterwards, he went all the way down the rue de Solesmes [back in Cambrai], and when he arrived at the bottom, he said, “Well I never! What on Earth? I’ve missed the house!’ So he went back up the rue de Solesmes, and there was just an enormous crater. The house was gone. And so we lost everything. Everything, everything, everything. And my mother, she became so ill, so depressed afterwards that she didn’t apply for any of the compensation after the war. So we lived in misery for years. That’s it. That’s what war is. Absolutely nothing left. Not a shirt, nothing. You could build [a house] with money, but a home with everything inside, it’s impossible. You can’t imagine what it’s like just to have the clothes you’re standing in. For me, when I hear about wars that are happening today – I understand.

Édith’s story opened this book. Her brother Jacques was killed by the Allies’ bombs, her family home destroyed and her mother’s despair bore down upon her remaining children for years afterwards. Édith then corrected herself: ‘We lived, not in misery because we still had our parents and they loved us, but in poverty. We lived in poverty for a long time.’ The consequences of bombing were highly destructive for this family – one of tens of thousands in France to suffer a bereavement, and of how many more to lose their home? Jacques’ death cast a long shadow over his siblings’ lives; yet bombing’s omission – until recently – from official, public and scholarly accounts of the war in France has meant that such people have been denied a space in which their trauma can be heard and their losses recognised. Édith did not seem bitter. She criticised neither v 211 v

Conclusion the bombers nor the forces that have buried her brother a second time, under more politically useful versions of the national past. But to ignore this death, and the impact of the Allied bombing on France, is to tell only a partial story. It permits civilian loss to remain obscure, and the population to remain cloaked in suspicion for their collaboration, their anti-Semitic persecution, their attentisme, their rash acts of resistance that provoked reprisals, their lies and subterfuges. But it should, however, be recognised that France was the frontline from 1939, and civilians were also victims of war. The oral narratives point towards ways in which children understand events and act in the public sphere, and the range of subjective experiences that a particular event – bombing – might produce. Oral history has illuminated shared memories of bombing, within and across locations and age ranges. Whatever elements memories share, however, they remain heterogeneous. That bombing made an impact on the interviewees’ lives is clear from their stories; but without a place in commonly told versions of the war in France, many do not remember it that way.

Evaluating the impact of bombing on the individual The Allied bombing of France has left its mark on survivors into old age. These traces often appear in forms of intrusion, one of the symptoms that indicates the presence of trauma. While the interviewees did not usually dwell on such intrusive memories, nor did all intrusive memories recur into the present, their existence suggests a degree of traumatisation nonetheless. Chapter 4 showed that the sounds of bombing held an important place in memory because of the meaning held within them. Several of the interviewees remarked that they had never forgotten the whistles and booms of bombs falling and exploding. Sound memories still spark anxieties. A few people mentioned fearing thunderstorms, whose rumbles, cracks and flashes of light sparked images from long ago. Responding to her husband’s professed enjoyment of being outdoors in a storm, Édith Denhez said:  ‘I would be terrified. But then I  knew what it was really like to be bombed. You see, it’s not the same.’ She denied his ability to understand what she had been through – as she did throughout the interview. Michel Jean-Bart, bombed heavily at Lille-Délivrance in 1944 said that for years after the war ended he hated thunderstorms because they ‘brought back the windows smashing to pieces’. The sound of aeroplanes also triggered flashbacks. Bernard Lemaire said that ‘low-flying planes scare me stiff ’, while for Thérèse Leclercq such planes were a reminder v 212 v

Evaluating bombing of ‘waking up with a start in the middle of the night’; she would never visit an air show, she said, and even planes in war films upset her; ‘it’s the noise, the planes, the bombing, this fear, this terror’. In all three towns, municipal sirens are tested regularly. Claude and Michel Thomas, and Michèle Martin in Boulogne-Billancourt, Bernard Lemaire in Lille, Thérèse Leclercq in Hellemmes and Serge Aubrée and Yvette Cadiou in Brest all commented on the anxiety this provoked. Serge described his response, from sense to emotion to action: ‘The siren’s frightening. Then, it’s instinct, looking  – where to hide? How to get underground?’ That such responses have lasted so long is testament to the profound impact bombs had on everyone who survived their threat. Bombs also changed people’s relationship with the dark. Bernard Lemaire commented that his generation was ‘used to turning off the lights’, the blackout having programmed a particular behaviour. Josette Dutilleul told me that she still dislikes the dark, which reminds her of anxiety and fear, awaiting bombers and bombs in the shelter. Light affected Yvette Chapalain in way that clearly surprised her. In the interview, she said several times that she had not been particularly frightened by bombing in Brest. Yet one night more than fifty years later, upon leaving a restaurant she saw the beams of a nearby lighthouse, revolving slowly against the night sky: And then, brutally, I started to shake. I relived everything that I’d seen during the war. And I  started to shake, and I  mean it, I  was really shaking. My husband said to me ‘What’s the matter with you?’ ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m scared, I’m scared.’ There were no noises, there were no bombs, there were no shells, but the sight, just that, brought it all back.

She concluded that she must have ‘absorbed that anxiety’, even as a nonchalant teenager; ‘children are fragile, nonetheless’ she said. In her recollections, all her anxieties and fears were bound up with her upsetting evacuation experience; events other than bombing provided the building blocks of her childhood memories, and have taken precedence in composing her identity. This experience mirrors the memory of bombing at the national level: although subsumed beneath ‘more important’ events, it has never disappeared completely. For some, the repercussions of the bombs were intense and enduring. Lucienne Rémeur narrowly escaped death at the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter tragedy in Brest on 9 September 1944. Alerting her injured mother to the fire that caused the explosion, Lucienne tugged her up the steps to safety, where German soldiers quickly took them to hospital. Her mother v 213 v

Conclusion remained ill, and fourteen-year-old Lucienne cared for her until they were taken in by nuns. When the French authorities counted the victims, Lucienne and her mother were thought to be among the dead. Their names were placed on a commemorative plaque inside the shell of the shelter, remaining there for fifty years or more. Lucienne preferred not to discuss her family’s difficult relationships, but when her mother returned to her estranged husband after recovering from her injuries, Lucienne refused to accompany her. Mother and daughter were subsequently reconciled, and remained very close thereafter. Saving her mother’s life affected, in her interpretation, her own family life. It had made her ‘very family-focused, very close to my own children’. She became ‘a rock’: she had had to be, she said, ‘to look after Mum’. Fear of loss and complicated feelings of love, duty and betrayal were woven into this story. Several interviewees had unanswered questions that stopped them from developing the sense of composure that can ease difficult memories. Max Potter wondered about the message broadcast on the BBC before the bombing of the marshalling yard at La Chapelle in Paris: ‘La chapelle au clair de lune’ (‘the chapel by moonlight’). Had local resistance groups known, he wondered? Could they  – and shouldn’t they  – have alerted civilians? Others questioned Allied tactics and war more generally. Cécile Bramé angrily asked ‘Why, why, why are there still wars?’ and Serge Aubrée despaired: humans had learnt nothing. ‘I am outraged that even now’, he said, when the full horrors of the Second World War are so well-known, ‘peace, where can it be found?’ While the people I interviewed may not self-identify as a specifically French war child generation, many linked themselves more broadly with childhood suffering in war. Serge said that when watching war footage on the news, ‘my first thought is for the children. They’re seeing terrible, terrible, terrible things.’ Thérèse Leclercq agreed, explaining that when she saw children in war-ravaged countries, she said to herself, ‘those poor kids. They’re scarred for life.’ Knowing the lifelong impact of witnessing such violence, these older people felt an affinity with children in conflict zones. It should be recognised that other interviewees positioned their moments of rupture very differently. Despite her later panic at the lighthouse, Yvette Chapalain’s moment of rupture was the liberation – the end to war, bombs and fear: ‘Afterwards, at the end of the war, I found my old friends again, we sang, we danced in the stones, the rubble, the debris. We had our whole lives ahead of us, we were full of hope.’ Trampling on the bombs’ destruction, symbolically stamping on the past four years, Yvette and her friends rebuilt and recovered. Yvette’s description reflects v 214 v

Evaluating bombing how the liberation period is often recounted; her words are part of a joyful narrative of liberation that swallows other experiences. Her sombre childhood having passed, Yvette projected herself into happier times. Other interviews lingered on unhappy moments – partly a result of the interview focus, of course – producing narratives tinged with resentment at the loss of a ‘real’ childhood. Thérèse Leclercq described her childhood as ‘spoilt’. Parents were anxious and denied children certain freedoms. In the bomb-damaged streets, ‘we weren’t allowed to play outside’, said Thérèse. Yvette Cadiou, another younger narrator, remarked upon parental anxiety: ‘We were overprotected.’ For Michèle Martin too, ‘it was a childhood that was stolen from us. Even surrounded by love, as we were, it wasn’t a happy childhood like you should have.’ The points were made almost guiltily, in the knowledge that others ‘had it worse’. These women were not angry. Yet there was a pervasive sense of regret about childhoods tainted by war. I have used the concept of trauma sparingly. This is partly because of a sense that many interviewees did not see themselves as traumatised, and so respects the coherence of their own identification, which in turn may be a consequence of the association of trauma with victimhood. People did not wish to paint themselves as victims, or for their lives to be viewed as abnormal. Nonetheless, if we look for evidence of lasting fear, anxiety or distress, most of the interviewees exhibited one or another at some point. Some rejected trauma outright. Henri Girardon felt that the war had done him no psychological damage, adding that ‘the proof is that in 1946, I joined the army’. He saw bombing as part of the French quest for liberation: an evil to arrive at a desired end. Proximity to bombs made a big difference too. Thus Jean Caniot, Bernard Lemaire and Bernard Leclercq, distant from targets, showed little evidence of lasting fear responses; nor did Madame Th and Christian Solet, both living in parts of Boulogne-Billancourt more distant from the factories. Yet proximity alone cannot explain this absence; Serge Aubrée, Henri Le Turquais and Jean Pochart in Brest, Jean Denhez in Aulnoye and Christian de la Bachellerie in Boulogne-Billancourt were directly under the bombs, yet their narratives showed little evidence of trauma. They were aged between ten and sixteen when worst bombed, thus spanning middle childhood and adolescence; age was not the common ground. There was within the temperament of each, however, a certain buoyancy when reflecting on events in the past; this optimism perhaps contributed to their resilience. Trauma was sometimes evident in the past behaviours that people recounted. Thérèse Leclercq spoke of stunned shock and hysteria when v 215 v

Conclusion the siren sounded. Danielle Durville said that she had stopped eating after the Renault raid of 3 March 1942. Josette Dutilleul described her terror in the confined underground passages at the Lezennes quarry, and indicated her hypervigilance at night. Sonia Agache sobbed as she came out of the trench-shelter and later the sirens gave her an overwhelming desire to hide. Marie-Thérèse Termote said that she cried whenever she heard planes flying over. Michèle Martin became desperate to leave Boulogne-Billancourt after her classmates were killed. More women spoke of abnormal behaviours resulting from bombing; perhaps women remembered them more clearly, or admitted to past ‘weakness’ more openly. But not only girls experienced behavioural responses. Max Potter, for example, mentioned being afraid to sleep alone in his bed as a teenager. Men’s narration was more likely to stall when describing fear. Michel Jean-Bart and Pierre Haigneré both became distressed in the interview when recounting the moment of bombing. Robert Belleuvre was upset when speaking of his friends’ deaths on their way to the cinema in Boulogne-Billancourt and Bernard Bauwens became angry when describing his horrible bombsite work. Women’s trauma – in this very small group – seemed more evident in the remembering and men’s in the telling.

Evaluating impact beyond the individual Using oral history has enabled me to examine individual trajectories and to understand the lasting impact on private lives. But it can also permit a more generalised analysis beyond the individual. Because, as Alessandro Portelli deftly noted, oral histories connect the life with the times – that is, they link the individual to the historical context.1 I have argued that children should have a place in histories of the Occupation, not least because they were used actually and symbolically by the Vichy regime to further its goals. No weapon affected children more than bombing, as homes were struck and evacuation ensued. It was often urban and working-class children who suffered most as they tended to live nearer to targets, and their families were less able to overcome any consequent material hardship. Exacerbating problems of hunger and cold, bombing contributed to the poor state of French children’s health during wartime; it also affected schooling, forced children to uproot, destroyed urban play spaces and upset sleep patterns, affecting physical and mental wellbeing. Children had a varied relationship with knowledge emanating from the adult world. They were certainly not wholly ignorant of the public world v 216 v

Evaluating bombing of war. It seems they understood more about what was concrete rather than abstract in their lives. For example, Chapter 2 showed that they were unable to envisage a future war, but they drew knowledge from tangible evidence of past war around them. Propaganda struggled to reach them, or required contextual knowledge they did not have. Understandings of bombing evolved in the knowledge of what bombs could do; this was a personal, emotion-driven response to an attack on home and safety. Learning about bombs could be passive, from exposure, observation and overhearing, but it could also be active. In many cases, however, it was still only partial, as with Max Potter’s ‘couloir de dancing’. Ignorance acted in two ways. The first was protective. Henri Girardon described war as terrible for parents, but as a boy he did not see the danger:  ‘you’re just not aware of it’, he said. Jean Caniot echoed this idea, stating that children play at war, even during war, little-knowing its perils; Max Potter said that children always found fun, living in their own world, isolated from events that worried the adults. But ignorance had a second, contrary effect, which could make events terrifying, meaningless torrents of sensory and emotional input. Bernard Lemaire remarked that although children may not have understood, they could be traumatised nonetheless. Thérèse Leclercq expressed it more forcefully: her ignorance left her ‘terrorised, traumatised’. Ignorance prevented the integration of the frightening event into a wider picture. The limitations on children’s knowledge should not be seen as barriers to historical enquiry, but they bring into sharp focus the epistemological boundaries of historical evidence of this kind. Yet part of the value of this research is in recognising that people can analyse their own understanding, and comment on it perceptively. A belief that children lack agency within society may have contributed to their omission from a historical discussion which places so much weight on moral responsibilities for decisions taken in the past. Yet children do have agency:  they make decisions, they act according to their desires and ideas, but there are limitations and no easy way to generalise about them. Oral histories permit the analysis of perceptions of personal agency in interpretations of the past, which are particularly important in composing a coherent sense of one’s own past. Sometimes, interviewees removed their own agency, placing responsibility in the hands of fate, luck or God. Agency thus rejected, negative consequences became easier to accept. Max Potter chided fate for having cheated him of the opportunity to escape to Britain in 1940; the theme of ‘what might have been’ ran through his narrative. But he used many examples of good luck, his own v 217 v

Conclusion and other people’s, to account for positive occurrences, such as his visit to Rouen in September 1943, which was heavily bombed the day after he left. Luck was fate’s happier companion. This reattribution of responsibility removed the taint of victimisation from deaths under the bombs: people were victims of fate or bad luck, not of the Allies. Michel Jean-Bart placed a different agency in control of his destiny during the raid on the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance in April 1944. Michel said that ‘when we saw the extent of the disaster around us, we said “It’s a miracle”. We survived because of a miracle. When the priest came by, he even blessed the house.’ There is a perceived agency at work here; did God will this miracle alone, or did Michel’s family’s prayers bring salvation? In other narratives, the narrator as the author of his or her own survival is a key motif. The narrowness of an escape that depended on a snap decision makes survival feel particularly fragile. Survival is overwhelmingly positive, but insistent dwelling on the moment of the decision marks it out as laden with meaning. Agency meant responsibility, and responsibility left traces of anxiety over sequences of events. Robert Belleuvre returned insistently to his decision not to go with his friends to the cinema, which led to his survival and their deaths. Lucienne Rémeur was instrumental in saving her and her mother’s lives. First she said ‘we were lucky to have escaped!’ However, this statement was immediately modified to edge luck out of the frame: ‘I succeeded in persuading [my mother] to leave.’ Lucienne’s own role cannot be forgotten. The meaning is created by her success:  ‘I don’t know what would have happened to me otherwise. That’s what traumatised me when I thought about it afterwards. That I could have been left all alone.’ Lucienne hangs her future happiness on her successful decision-making in the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter. Being bombed troubled Lucienne’s memory less than the fragile responsibility she held, momentarily, for her family’s future. By stating her own agency, Lucienne celebrates survival but also qualifies it with what might have been: the shared possibility of death that unites these stories. Personal agency was usually associated with situations of survival, while the more negative consequences of bombing could be attributed to fate, luck or God. Explaining other people’s misfortunes as fate or bad luck removed from humans any agency; nothing could have saved those who died. It seems paradoxical that the same people should use fate, luck, God and agency concurrently, but all are linked. They are devices that ease the survivor’s guilt. For it would be hard to ascribe one’s own escape to a good decision, and someone else’s death to their foolishness, blaming v 218 v

Evaluating bombing them for their own demise. Much easier, then, to see other people’s suffering as a product of bad luck, inescapable fate or God’s will. These interpretations mitigate the negative impact of surviving traumatic events. Beyond conclusions about children and bombing, these oral histories enable us to peel the lid off family life in the past and peer inside. During the Second World War, domestic life was pulled deeper into public war. Through stories of bombing, historical information also emerges about family relationships, problems of food and housing, about clothing and furniture, and about how families function under stress. Vichy sought to control youth, venerated the family and cherished children in its obsession with repopulation; this public appropriation of children was a continuity from the Third Republic, where children were as much the property of the state as of their parents. But children live their daily lives in the domestic sphere, the borders of which formed the porous boundaries of their understanding and activity in the wider world. Home was no longer safe, but physical safety was sometimes less important to them than emotional security. Interpersonal relationships played an important role at the micro-level, motivating action taken in response to, and in preparation for, bombing: emotion is a driver of action. The state protected its civilians as a duty, but parents performed the equivalent role through love; furthermore, caring relations between friends and neighbours, cemented by the shared threat, extended this emotional drive beyond family into community. On the streets of Brest, as in many other French towns, the impact of bombing is still clear. Gone are the buildings of a pre-war past; the main square, the reconstructed town hall and the church are stark and angular, with monuments commemorating fallen servicemen prominently positioned. Few Brestois now remember Brest ‘as it was’; those who do point out landmarks from days gone by, days when, Andréa Cousteaux said nostalgically, ‘Brest was such a joyful town’. All regions were affected, and while Normandy’s tragedies are perhaps most well-known, the Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire, and Boulogne-sur-Mer on the Channel also suffered destruction in excess of 80 per cent.2 Andréa’s view of her town before the deluge is unlikely to be unique. It is difficult to understand the shape of post-war France – its architecture and its cultural heritage – without knowing something of the Allies’ bombs. In bombed towns, community relations adapted, as did relations between citizens and the state. An idea of ‘Blitz spirit’ to describe a community facing this shared peril could well be applied to French localities under the bombs. Social capital was a vital resource. People derived v 219 v

Conclusion reassurance from the group in communal bomb shelters, they helped clear their own streets and dug out their neighbours, and provided ad hoc or more permanent accommodation to bombed-out friends and family. Some of this solidarity extended beyond the local community; thus, one impact of bombing was to draw the nation together to support its victims, in much the same way that prisoners of war and their families provoked a broad charitable response. Donations and condolences flooded into bombed towns from across France and its empire. The government tried to co-opt this goodwill, translating it into the National Revolution’s language of duty and sacrifice. While charitable giving could be put down to duty and sacrifice, it must also be seen as compassion and generosity of individuals towards strangers. But solidarity worked best at a distance. When refugees arrived in quiet villages, eventually generosity wore thinner; charity became an obligation rather than a choice. The very physical nature of the impact of bombing makes its absence in histories of the Occupation surprising. Many interviewees remarked that they still notice the scars it left on the urban landscape. With knowledge of life before, during and after the bombs, childhood survivors have a unique geographical perspective. But change went further than physical appearance. Christian de la Bachellerie said that in his neighbourhood, close to the Renault factory in Billancourt, ‘the people who were bombed out left the area […] not many came back’. When apartment blocks were rebuilt, often it was new people who moved in. Being bombed out led Danielle Durville’s family to move from Billancourt to the street built by La France-Mutualiste in Boulogne. She has remained there ever since. She gained a community from bombing, whereas Christian lost one. The impact of bombing thus extended into post-war population shifts, and created a break in local continuity. Beyond its impact on French towns and their inhabitants, bombing also provides an insight into Vichy’s policies and propaganda. The Vichy government had been formed with the intention of ending combat on French soil, yet capitulation and collaboration brought military activity and civilian suffering to France. Vichy needed to minimise the upheaval air raids caused, in order to ensure that economic life continued and civil unrest was deterred. The idea of a non-interventionist state, dear to the original project of the National Revolution, collapsed under the weight of the crisis, as the government was increasingly forced to support the victims of bombing, refugees and evacuees. Through all of the French State’s policymaking with regard to bombing, the watchword  – more or less pronounced at different moments – was reaction. Pre-emptive action to v 220 v

Evaluating bombing protect civilians was rare. The constraints imposed by the German occupiers are also evident throughout; these are shown to vary from locality to locality, and indeed had a significant effect on aspects of children’s lives, such as whether they were evacuated. Allied air raids also affected public opinion in France in ambiguous ways. They illuminated the gulf between the will of the government and the will of the people, and the tricky role of administrators at municipal levels, mediating between a patriotic population and an increasingly pro-German government. Near the beginning of the war, when the population was most enthusiastic about bombing, the French government protested to provoke condemnation of the Allies; later, when heavier bombing engendered genuine public outrage, Vichy turned its critique inwards, trying to alter the opinions of French citizens. The Resistance too requested that more sabotage be used instead of bombing. Such protests were ignored, indicating the relative power relations among key stakeholders. German anti-aircraft guns, seemingly a protection from the bombers, attracted more blame than thanks. The bomber acquired a strange status among French people: he was a friend, he was to be pitied, he was to be defended, sometimes criticised, but his weapons were to be feared.

Bombing and memory in France A research project on civilian experience of bombing in France that relied solely on archival material – much of which, nonetheless, draws on memory in letters written about air raids, eyewitness accounts, newspaper stories, official reports – would have been wholly possible. But the Allied bombing of France is interesting precisely because it has an odd place in memories of the Occupation. The notion of ‘collective memory’ is problematic in relation to bombing, because certain events were only experienced by certain people and then in unique ways by individual members of that collectivity. As lived and remembered experience are so fractured, it is arguable that there is no such thing as a ‘collective memory’ of war at a national level, although there are strong public representations of war (propagated in films, books, television, media, memorialisation, politics, academia), which plant the seeds of a dominant narrative of the past that take root over time and grow until they block out parts of lived experience.3 Events become codified, and the only way of recounting them is by using the appropriate cultural scripts. This was evident when I discussed the 1940 civilian exodus in my interviews. No one spoke of it without v 221 v

Conclusion

Figure  6 Memorial in Hellemmes, near to Lille. The inscription reads: ‘The commune of Hellemmes to the civilian victims of the bombing, 1940–1944.’ making reference to the strafing of refugees by German planes, although careful listening revealed that not all who spoke of it were targeted. But strafing – whether it happened to the individual or not – is significant in the story of the past, even if absent from a person’s lived reality. Strafing acts as a shorthand that encapsulates the very worst of experience, justifying desperate capitulation in the face of a merciless enemy. But no such mythic story has been constructed around bombing. Bombing was a v 222 v

Evaluating bombing pivotal moment in some childhoods; it was an intense sensory and emotional experience; it had a lasting impact. Wylegała has noted that ‘the feeling of belonging to a community of others who are equally affected allowed [her interviewees] to rethink their loss [and] inscribe it into a wider trajectory of the group’. But in France an absence of commemorative activities to remember bombing has left its victims with no opportunity to rework their trauma.4 Bombing has rarely featured in public representations of war in France, partly, perhaps, because of the difficulties of assimilating this friendly aggression into the story of collaboration and resistance, partly because the enormous regional diversity has prevented the construction of a common story. But the absence of bombing from public representations of war in France, until quite recently, does not mean that it is absent from memory. I only interviewed thirty-six people. How many more French adults still alive today were children under the Allied bombs? Into how many memories creep the sound of sirens, whistles and booms, images of searchlights, flashes and the shattered remains of once-familiar people and places? Oral history was a way to access and preserve a set of memories. It also highlighted the idiosyncratic ways that the same event (a particular raid) impacted on different people. Finally, the impact of a set of events on a human life could not be fully understood without access to subjective and longer-term interpretations. Thus private lives and private memories, unique and subjective, were at the core of this study, and retain a privileged place. It is at the level of the individual that we find memories of bombing to be fresh, emotional and vivid, and not lost inside a black hole of forgetfulness. But memories of bombing exist nonetheless in collective forms too. The importance of bombing as a shared experience comes out of the interviews. Shared does not imply a homogeny in the way that ‘collective’ does; the experience remains individual, but events and responses were shared. Allied air raids on France had, at different moments, characteristics in common with each other, depending on tactics, technology and targets. Being bombed saw people come together into groups for reassurance and protection. In the aftermath, mutual help – entr’aide – was vital. Not all responses were shared. Fear was held in common everywhere, but anger was not. The reaction of rural communities to encroaching refugees suggests a line between those who had shared fear and loss, and those who had not. Members of the generation who were children under the bombs have placed their experiences of war into a comparative hierarchy whereby v 223 v

Conclusion bombing is measured against other hardships. A lack of reinforcement of the experience of being bombed within public discourse has helped to push bombing down the scale. Food and fuel shortages were frequently recalled as the worst experience of war, generally, however, among those least affected by bombing, including Christian Solet, Jean Caniot and Michel Thomas; yet Thérèse Leclercq, who felt traumatised by bombing, also highlighted hunger as the worst suffering she endured. The Germans loomed large as a terrible memory, for Andréa Cousteaux and Cécile Bramé because they were frightening people, for Serge Aubrée because they stole his freedom, and for Madame Jean-Bart, Yvette Cadiou and Bernard Lemaire because of the violence they perpetrated. The majority of the interviewees saw the worst part of war as family separation, sometimes because fathers were prisoners (as was the case for Danielle Duville, Christian Solet, Bernard Leclercq and Lucien Agache) or interned (Max Potter). Others were separated when they became refugees or evacuees, like Yvette Cadiou, Cécile Bramé, Serge Aubrée, Yvette Chapalain, Yves Le Roy, Henri Le Turquais, Henri Girardon and the Thomas brothers. For Michèle Martin and Josette Dutilleul, enjoyable evacuation experiences made separation easier to bear. Collaboration has affected how bombing has been remembered. Michel Jean-Bart, despite his terrifying experience in April 1944, felt retrospectively that the most horrible feature of war had been French volunteers fighting alongside the Nazis. Serge Aubrée, the Thomas brothers and Bernard Lemaire in hindsight named the deportation of Jews from France as the most terrible part of the war. Several others mentioned finding out about the Holocaust after the war, new knowledge that redefined the meaning of their own lived experience; clearly, even the ‘worst’ things were ‘not as bad’ as this. Thus the French civilian experience of war slid down the hierarchy of suffering as the shame of collaboration grew to dominate public discussion. We see here the reflexive interaction of memories at micro- and macro-levels: in a personal ‘list’ of hardships, part of that list is reinforced at the macro, public level; other elements, not finding confirmation nationally, are pushed down the list, and some drop off the bottom. The language that could be used to speak of these experiences disappears or fails to be created in the public realm; similar memories or experiences rarely surface to support one’s own. Oral history is not simply a supplementary source, used only where none other exists, to seek information where none has been preserved. It is uniquely able to get at subjective meanings and interpretations of events in the past and across time. It provides a different v 224 v

Evaluating bombing epistemological base for historical study. ‘Experience’ is stretched, from a moment in the past, to include events, contexts, physical, sensory and emotional responses, consequent actions, and the development of meaning, in memory, over time. Ordinary people’s own ideas of historical causality, of impact and of importance matter (even if they might be factually ‘wrong’), and these subjective interpretations are valuable as they indicate the half-life of traumatic events suffered in childhood. Personal memories are buffeted by the winds of public representations of events in the past. Some memories are swept away forever, some are deformed and reformed by the gusts of dominant narratives, while others are securely tethered to parts of an individual identity, and can be hauled in or unfurled as required, flying in the face of more commonly held assumptions. But the voices who would speak of them are calm; they do not clamour for attention, and remember these difficult moments gently and sorrowfully. Having described the apocalyptic air raid on La Délivrance in April 1944, Pierre Haigneré solemnly stated when I interviewed him in 2009: ‘I don’t talk about it. I  avoid speaking of it.’ Yet in July 2014, Pierre was part of a small team working on a local newsletter that produced an eight-page special issue on ‘The Seventieth Anniversary of the Bombing of La Délivrance, 10 April 1944’.5 Speaking of bombing to me and with others, taking part in research and education, has helped to shift the constriction. Trauma needs a listener, and the impact of war on these French children deserves to be heard.

Notes 1 A. Portelli, ‘Oral history as genre’, in The Battle of the Valle Giulia, p. 6. 2 D. Voldman, La Reconstruction des villes françaises de 1940  à 1954 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), p. 35. 3 Popular Memory Group, ‘Popular memory:  theory, politics, method’, in TOHR, pp. 75–86. 4 Wylegała, ‘Child migrants and deportees from Poland and Ukraine after the Second World War’, p. 303. 5 Le Bavard de Délivrance, Hors-série no. 2, special issue ‘Les 70 ans du bombardement de la Cité de la Délivrance, 10 avril 1944’ (July 2014).

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Appendix: biographical profiles

Interviewees AGACHE, Lucien, b. 1934, childhood home Hellemmes (Lille); father was a prisoner of war for some time; mother deceased; eldest of two. Lucien lived with his grandparents until 1945 when his grandmother died. Lucien’s grandfather worked at the Usine de Fives. Interviewed 29 April 2009, Villeneuve d’Ascq, with his wife Sonia Agache, archived in the Archives municipales de Lille (AML). AGACHE, Sonia, b. 1933, childhood home Hellemmes (Lille); father was a roofer, mother was a housewife/mother; youngest of six. Interviewed 29 April 2009, Villeneuve d’Ascq, with her husband Lucien Agache (AML). AUBRÉE, Serge, b.  1928, childhood home Brest, town centre; father had a small painting and decorating business in Brest, mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Interviewed 16 April 2009, Brest, with his friend Cécile Bramé, archived in the Archives municipales et communautaires de Brest (AMCB). BAUWENS, Bernard, b.  1928, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault district; father deceased, mother worked at Renault; only child. Interviewed 8 April 2009, Villeparisis, archived in the Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). BELLEUVRE, Robert, b.  1927, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, laundry district; father was a metalworker at Renault, mother was a housewife/ mother; eldest of two. Interviewed 14 April 2009, Conflans-Ste-Honorine (AMBB). BRAMÉ, Cécile, b. 1929, childhood home Recouvrance, district of Brest; father worked in port division of the navy, mother was a housewife/mother; youngest of two. Interviewed 16 April 2009, Brest, with her friend Serge Aubrée (AMCB). CADIOU, Yvette, b. 1936, childhood home Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, district of Brest; father worked in port division of the navy, mother was a housewife/ mother; eldest of three. Interviewed 19 April, Brest, 2009 (AMCB).

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Appendix CANIOT, Jean, b. 1929, childhood home Lambersart (Lille); father was a businessman, mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Interviewed 30 April 2009, Lambersart (AML). CHAPALAIN, Yvette, b. 1929, childhood home Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, district of Brest; father worked at the arsenal, mother was a housewife/mother; eldest of five. Interviewed 23 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). COUSTEAUX, Andréa, b.  1927, childhood home St Martin, district of Brest; father had retired from navy and worked for the town council; mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Interviewed 20 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). DE LA BACHELLERIE, Christian, b. 1924, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault district; father owned a construction company, mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Although an older interviewee, Christian lived with and depended on his parents at the time he was bombed. Interviewed 10 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). DENHEZ, Édith, b.  1935, childhood home Cambrai (Nord); father worked for a local aristocrat, mother was a housewife/mother; third of four children. Interviewed with her husband Jean Denhez, Lomme, 28 April 2009 (AML). DENHEZ, Jean, b. 1934, childhood home Aulnoye (Nord) father was a railwayman, mother was a housewife/mother; eldest of seven. Interviewed with his wife Édith Denhez, Lomme, 28 April 2009 (AML). DURVILLE, Danielle, b. 1939, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault district, then in Boulogne district; father was prisoner of war, but later worked for the water company; mother was a secretary; eldest of two. Interviewed 10 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). DUTILLEUL, André, b.  1929, childhood home Mont de Terre district of Hellemmes (Lille); father was a telephonist on the railways, mother took in occasional sewing; eldest of two but sister died of tuberculosis in 1942. Interviewed with his wife Josette Dutilleul, 27 April 2009 in the Mont de Terre district of Hellemmes (Lille) (AML). DUTILLEUL, Josette, b.  1932, childhood home Mont de Terre district of Hellemmes (Lille); father was a railwayman, mother took in occasional sewing; third of four children. Interviewed with her husband André Dutilleul, 27 April 2009 in the Mont de Terre district of Hellemmes (Lille) (AML). FAGARD, Marguerite, b. 1915, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, laundry district; father owned laundry firm, mother worked for the firm too; second of three children. Marguerite features little in this book as she was born too early to be considered a child when the family business was bombed (see note 18, Chapter  1). Interviewed 7 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). FLOCH, Michel, b.  1927, childhood home Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, district of Brest; father was a blacksmith at the arsenal, mother was a housewife/ mother; only child. Interviewed 23 April 2009, Brest (AMCB).

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Appendix GIRARDON, Henri, b. 1928, childhood home Lambézellec, district of Brest; parents owned and ran a grocery shop; only child. Interviewed 21 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). HAIGNERÉ, Pierre, b.  1935, childhood home in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near Lomme (Lille); father was a railwayman, mother was a housewife/mother; youngest of three. Interviewed 2 May 2009, Lomme (AML). JEAN-BART, Michel, b. 1934, childhood home in the railway workers’ housing estate at La Délivrance near Lomme (Lille); father was a railwayman, mother was a housewife/mother; third of four children. Madame Jean-Bart was present at the interview, and contributed to the discussion. She features occasionally in this book, although details of her family circumstances were not recorded, save that her elder brother was shot by the Germans in September 1944. He had been a rescue worker at Lille-Délivrance after the 10 April 1944 raid. Interviewed 28 April 2009, Mons-en-Barœul (AML). LECLERCQ, Bernard, b.  25 April 2009, childhood home Chéreng (east of Lille), father was prisoner of war until 1941, when he returned very ill, receiving a full invalid pension, mother was a housewife; eldest of two. Bernard was not bombed as a child, and so features little in relation to air raids in particular, although his reflections on being a child in war were used. Interviewed with his wife Thérèse Leclercq, 25 April 2009, Hellemmes (AML). LECLERCQ, Thérèse, b. 1938, childhood home Hellemmes (Lille); father worked at Peugeot factory, mother was a housewife/mother; second of four children. Interviewed with her husband Bernard Leclercq, 25 April 2009, Hellemmes (AML). LEMAIRE, Bernard, b.  1930, childhood home Lille, Vauban district; father worked in accounts at gas company, mother was a housewife/mother; fifth of thirteen children. Interviewed 30 April 2009, Aubers (AML). LE ROY, Yves, b.  1931, childhood home Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, district of Brest; father was a stock manager at food shop, mother was a housewife/ mother; youngest of three children. Interviewed with his friend Henri Le Turquais, 21 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). LE TURQUAIS, Henri, b. 1930, childhood home Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon, district of Brest; father was a plumber, mother was a housewife/mother, but died 1943; only child. Interviewed with his friend Yves Le Roy, 21 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). MARTIN, Michèle, b.  1931, childhood home Boulogne district of Boulogne-Billancourt, bordering sixteenth arrondissement of Paris; father worked at gas company, mother was a housewife/mother; youngest of two. Michèle had had polio and had some difficulty walking as a child. Interviewed 7 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB).

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Appendix POCHART, Jean, b. 1931, childhood home Kergrac’h near to the arsenal, Brest; parents were farmers; eldest of four children. Interviewed 22 April 2009, Brest (AMCB). POTTER, Max, b.  1929, childhood home La Chapelle, eighteenth arrondissement of Paris; father was a British journalist and was interned, mother was a housewife/mother; youngest of two. Interviewed 11 April 2009, Neuilly (AMBB). RÉMEUR, Lucienne, b. 1930, childhood home Brest, town centre; her parents were estranged, and she lived alone with mother who worked at the arsenal; eldest of four. Lucienne only wished to be interviewed about her experience at the Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter. Interviewed 20 April 2009, Lanmeur (AMCB). SOLET, Christian, b. 1932, childhood home Boulogne district of BoulogneBillancourt; parents ran a cheese shop; only child. Interviewed 9 April, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). TERMOTE, Marie-Thérèse, b.  1930, childhood home Hellemmes (Lille); father was a railwayman, mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Interviewed with her husband Paul Termote, Hellemmes, 29 April 2009 (AML). TERMOTE, Paul, b. 1935, childhood home Hellemmes (Lille); father was a railwayman, mother was a housewife/mother; only child. Interviewed with his wife Marie-Thérèse Termote, Hellemmes, 29 April 2009 (AML). TH, Madame (anonymised at her request), b. 1927, childhood home Boulogne district of Boulogne-Billancourt; father owned a shop, mother was a housewife/mother; eldest of two. Interviewed 11 April 2009, Levallois-Perret (AMBB). THOMAS, Claude, b.  1931, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, town centre; parents owned a furniture shop; youngest of two. Interviewed with his brother Michel Thomas, 6 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB). THOMAS, Michel, b. 1929, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, town centre; parents owned a furniture shop; eldest of two. Interviewed with his brother Claude Thomas, 6 April 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB).

Writers COPPIN, Jeannine, b. 1932, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt, laundry district; parents had a laundry business; one brother. Date of account 19 March 2009, plus emails of 1 and 4 June 2009. HEUZÉ, Monique, b. unknown, childhood home La Chapelle, eighteenth arrondissement of Paris; parents’ occupations and siblings unknown. Date of account 19 December 2009. LABAUNE, Jean, b. 1933, childhood home La Chapelle, eighteenth arrondissement of Paris; parents’ occupations unknown; only child. Dates of accounts by email 10 February 2010 and 22 February 2010.

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Appendix LEMAÎTRE, Simonne, b.  1934, childhood home Mons-en-Barœul (Lille); parents’ occupations unknown; second of three children. Date of account 28 April 2009. MARTIN, Gilberte, b.  1927, childhood home Boulogne district of Boulogne-Billancourt, bordering sixteenth arrondissement of Paris; father worked at gas company, mother was housewife/mother; eldest of two. Gilberte’s sister Michèle was interviewed for this book. Date of account 9 February 2009. MANDRY, Christiane, b. 1937, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt; parents had a stonemasonry business and florist; siblings unknown. Date of account 29 March 2009. MASSE, Maurice, b. 1920, childhood home Boulogne-Billancourt (laundry district); parents’ occupations unknown, siblings unknown. Date of letter to the author 8 February 2009, but detailed account enclosed was written much earlier for another purpose. Although I visited Monsieur Masse and spoke to him at length, he declined to be recorded.

v 230 v

Bibliography

Interviews with the author Agache, Lucien Agache, Sonia Aubrée, Serge Bauwens, Bernard Belleuvre, Robert Bramé, Cécile Cadiou, Yvette Caniot, Jean Chapalain, Yvette Cousteaux, Andréa de la Bachellerie, Christian Denhez, Édith Denhez, Jean Durville, Danielle Dutilleul, André Dutilleul, Josette Fagard, Marguerite Floch, Michel Girardon, Henri Haigneré, Pierre Jean-Bart, Michel Leclercq, Bernard Leclercq, Thérèse Lemaire, Bernard Le Roy, Yves Le Turquais, Henri

Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord) Villeneuve d’Ascq (Nord) Brest (Finistère) Villeparisis (Seine-et-Marne) Conflans-Ste-Honorine (Yvelines) Brest (Finistère) Brest (Finistère) Lambersart (Nord) Brest (Finistère) Brest (Finistère) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) Lomme (Nord) Lomme (Nord) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) Hellemmes (Nord) Hellemmes (Nord) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) Brest (Finistère) Brest (Finistère) Lomme (Nord) Mons-en-Baroeul (Nord) Hellemmes (Nord) Hellemmes (Nord) Aubers (Nord) Brest (Finistère) Brest (Finistère)

v 231 v

29 April 2009 29 April 2009 16 April 2009 8 April 2009 14 April 2009 16 April 2009 19 April 2009 30 April 2009 23 April 2009 20 April 2009 10 April 2009 28 April 2009 28 April 2009 10 April 2009 27 April 2009 27 April 2009 7 April 2009 23 April 2009 21 April 2009 2 May 2009 28 April 2009 25 April 2009 25 April 2009 30 April 2009 21 April 2009 21 April 2009

Bibliography Martin, Michèle Pochart, Jean Potter, Max Rémeur, Lucienne Solet, Christian Termote, Marie-Thérèse Termote, Paul Th, Madame Thomas, Claude Thomas, Michel

Boulogne-Billancourt Brest (Finistère) Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) Lanmeur (Finistère) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) Hellemmes (Nord)

7 April 2009 22 April 2009 11 April 2009 20 April 2009 9 April 2009 29 April 2009

Hellemmes (Nord) Lavallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine)

29 April 2009 11 April 2009 6 April 2009 6 April 2009

Written accounts given to the author Coppin, Jeannine (Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), by email 1 and 4 June 2009 (letter to the author) Heuzé, Monique (La Chapelle, Paris), 16 December 2009 (letter to Max Potter, used with kind permission) Labaune, Jean (La Chapelle, Paris), by email 10 February 2010, and 22 February 2010 (letter to the author) Lemaître, Simonne (Mons-en-Barœul, Nord), 28 April 2009 (letter to the author) Mandry, Christiane (Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), 29 March 2009 (letter to Mme C. Thomas, used with kind permission) Martin, Gilberte (Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), 9 February 2009 (letter to the author) Masse, Maurice (Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), 8 February 2009 (letter to the author) and a written account of his experience of bombing used in a radio broadcast, entitled ‘Il y a … déjà longtemps’ (undated).

Archival sources France: main Archives municipales de Boulogne-Billancourt (AMBB) 6H3 6H4 6H6 v 232 v

Bibliography 6H7 6H17 6H18 6H19 6H72 6H73 6H75 6H76 6H77 6H79 6H81 6H82 6J1 to 6J20 18J1 22J.1 2 Fi 4302 Box of uncatalogued newspapers and magazines Livre d’Or: Exposition – Les Bombardements 1942–1943 (8 May–22 June 2002) Archives municipales et communautaires de Brest (AMCB) 4H4.1 4H4.5 4H4.6 4H4.10 4H4.13 4H4.14 4H4.15 4H4.19 4H4.20 4H4.21 4H4.29 4H4.25 4H4.27 4H4.28 4H4.29 4H4.32 4H4.33 v 233 v

Bibliography 4H4.34 4H4.35 4H4.36 26S: Suzanne Langlois, unpublished diary, 2 vols 27S: Abbé Lannuzel, ‘Notes’ 28S: Monsieur Le Scour, unpublished diary Archives départementales du Nord (ADN) 1W.123 1W.1028 1W.1290 1W.1369 1W.1373 1W.1482 1W.1484 1W.1586 1W.4696.1 1W.4696.6 1W.4696.8 1W.4699.2 1W.4699.3 1W.4699.7 25W.38056 25W.38102 25W.38131 25W.38134 25W.38178.1 25W.38178.2 25W.38180 Archives municipales de Lille (AML) 5H3.1 5H3.2 5H3.3 5H3.4 5H3.6 5H3.17 5H3.19 v 234 v

Bibliography 5H3.20 5H3.36 5H3.38 5H3.42 5H3.43 5H6.5 5H6.6 5H10.2bis 5H10.3 5H10.4 5H10.5 5H10.7 5H10.8 5H10.11 5H10.12 5H10.20 5H10.22 5H10.23

France: other Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône (ADBR) 76W.200 Archives départementales du Calvados (ADC) 9W.99 Archives départementales de la Creuse (ADCr) 987W.110 Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine (ADIV) 47W.6 Archives départementales de la Loire (ADL) 7D.W26 v 235 v

Bibliography Archives départementales de la Loire-Atlantique (ADLA) 1693W.129 1690W.146 52J.61 Archives départementales du Morbihan (ADM) 2W.15921 7W.4794 Archives municipales de Marseille (AMM) 29II.4 Archives nationales de France, Paris (AN) F7.14901a

United Kingdom The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) AIR 14/102 AIR 14/4465 AIR 19/217 AIR 19/218 AIR 37/761 AIR 37/1118 CAB 80/27/42 CAB 79/23/40 CAB 79/10/37 FO 660/191 FO 954/8A FO 954/23 FO 371/28541 FO 371/31999 FO 371/32000 FO 371/36038 FO 371/41864 v 236 v

Bibliography FO 371/41984 FO 371/49203 British Broadcasting Corporation Written Archives at Caversham (BBC WAC) E1/702/1: French service: file 1A, 1939–40 E1/702/2: French service: file 1B, 1941 E1/705: MOI French News Summaries, 12 April–31 August 1944 E1/706: French Service papers, 1942–45 French Scripts, 1–14 January 1942 French Scripts, 15–28 February 1942 French Scripts, 16–28 February 1942 French Scripts, 1–15 March 1942 French Scripts 16–31 March 1942 French Scripts, 1–14 April 1942 French Scripts, 15–30 April 1942 French Scripts, 16–31 January 1943 French Scripts, 1–15 June 1943 French Scripts, 16–31 July 1943 French Scripts, 16–31 December 1943 French Scripts, 1–15 May 1944

Official documents Hansard Journal Officiel

Printed memoirs, diaries and contemporary texts Anon., review of J. Hamburger (ed.), Medical Research in France during the War 1939–1945 (Paris: Flammarion, 1947) in the American Journal of Psychiatry, 197 (1950) Bauer, F., 40 à Londres: Un espion qui venait du jazz (Paris: Bayard, 2004) Bodman, F., ‘War conditions and the mental health of the child’, British Medical Journal, 4 October 1941, 486–8 Bood, M., Les Années doubles: journal d’une lycéenne sous l’Occupation (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1974) Bourdan, P., 1940–1944 Pierre Bourdan vous parle (Paris: Magnard, 1990)

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Bibliography Brauner, A., Ces Enfants ont vécu la guerre (Paris:  Les Éditions Sociales Françaises, 1946) Burbury, W. M., ‘Evacuation and air raids:  effects on children’, British Medical Journal, 8 November 1941, 660–2 Burlingham, D. and A. Freud, Young Children in Wartime (London: Allen and Unwin, 1942) Burlingham, D. and A. Freud, Infants without Families (London:  Allen and Unwin, 1944) Carey-Trefzer, C. J., ‘The results of a clinical study of war-damaged children who attended the child guidance clinic, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London’, Journal of Mental Science, 400 (1949), 536–59 Charpentier, R., reviews of J. Alliez and J. Charpin, Guerre et troubles mentaux. Peut-on parler de psychose du bombardement (Comité médicale des Bouches-du-Rhône, séance du 1er décembre 1944, Marseille-médical, 15 March 1944), and of C. L. François, Enfants victimes de la guerre. Une expérience pédagogique “Le Renouveau” (Paris:  Bourrellier, 1949)  in Annales médico-psychologiques, 1946 (vol. 1), 194, and 1949 (vol. 2), 600–1 Dabit, E., Journal Intime 1938–1936 (Paris: Gallimard, 1989) Debré, R., ‘Conditions of children in France under the Occupation’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 38 (1945), 447–9 Dréo, J., Un Gamin dans la guerre. Carnets et croquis de Brest (Brest: Éditions Le Télégramme, 2002) Glover, E., ‘Notes on the psychological effects of war conditions on the civilian population. Part III:  the “Blitz”  – 1940–41’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 23 (1942), 17–37 Green, J., Les Années Faciles, 1928–1934 (Paris: Plon, 1960) Guéhenno, J., Journal des années noires, 1940–1944 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002; 1st edn, 1947) Janis, I. L, Air War and Emotional Stress:  Psychological Studies of Bombing and Civilian Defense (New York: McGraw Hill, 1951) Le Melledo, P., Lorient à l’heure de l’évacuation: Itinéraire d’un Gavroche lorientais (La Faouët: Liv’éditions, 2004) Marin, J., Petit Bois pour un grand feu: mémoires (Paris: Fayard, 1994) Mercier, M. H. and J. L. Despert, ‘Psychological effects of the war on French children’, Psychosomatic Medicine, 5.3 (1943), 266–72 Mons, W. E.  R., ‘Air raids and the child’, British Medical Journal, 1 November 1941, 625–6 Oberlé, J., Jean Oberlé vous parle: souvenirs de cinq années à Londres (Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1945) Rist, C., Une Saison gâtée. Journal de la guerre et de l’occupation, 1939–1945 (Paris: Fayard, 1983) Roux, N., C’est la guerre, les enfants! (Cherbourg-Octeville: Isoète, 2007) Ruffin, R., Journal d’un J3 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1979)

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Bibliography Stuart, H. C., ‘Review of evidence as to the nutritional state of children in France’, American Journal of Public Health, 35.4 (1945), 299–307 Titmuss, R. M., Problems of Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1950) Weiss, L., Mémoires d’une européenne, vol. 3, 1934–39 (Paris: Payot, 1970) Werth, A., France and Munich Before and After the Surrender (New  York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1939) Werth, A., The Twilight of France. 1933–40 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1942) Zuckerman, S., From Apes to Warlords, 1904–1946: An Autobiography (London: Hamilton, 1978)

Local magazines Le Bavard de Délivrance, ‘Laissez vous conter la cité de la Délivrance’, 50.1 (2008) Le Bavard de Délivrance, Hors-série no. 2, special issue ‘Les 70 ans du bombardement de la Cité de la Délivrance, 10 avril 1944’ (July 2014) Leignel, T., ‘Déluge de fer et feu: 10 mai 1944’, Coup d’oeil: les infos du cercle historique Lezennes, 37 (April 2004), 2–6 Verstraeten, B., ‘Hellemmes défiguré’, Lille magazine, 16 (May 2004), 10

Radio Miriam Cendrars interview on Thomas Baumgartner, ‘Les passagers de la nuit:  mythologie de poche de la radio #33  – Miriam Cendrars’, France Culture, 18 June 2010

Websites ‘Des villages Cassini aux communes d’aujourd’hui’: http://cassini.ehess.fr/cassini/fr Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques: www.insee.fr

Printed secondary works Adamthwaite, A., Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914– 1940 (London: Hodder Arnold, 1995) Agee, J. and W. Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (New  York:  Houghton Mifflin, 1988) Ambourg, N., F. Bédoussac, S. Couëtoux and B. Foucart, BoulogneBillancourt: Ville d’art et d’histoire (Paris: Éditions de la Patrimoine, 2009) Amouroux, H., Les Vies des Français sous l’Occupation (Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard, 1961) Amouroux, H., La Grande Histoire des Français sous l’Occupation, vol. I, Le peuple du désastre, 1939–40 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976)

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Bibliography Anderson, K. and D. C. Jack, ‘Learning to listen:  interview techniques and analysis’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 157–71 Apel, L., ‘Voices from the rubble society – “Operation Gomorrah” and its aftermath’, Journal of Social History, 44.4 (2011), 1019–32 Ariès, P., Centuries of Childhood (London: Jonathan Cape, 1962) Ashplant, T. G., G. Dawson and M. Roper (eds.), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000) Atkin, N., ‘The cult of Joan of Arc in French schools, 1940–1945’, in R. Kedward and R. Austin (eds.), Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), 265–9 Atkin, N., ‘Reshaping the past:  the teaching of history in Vichy France (1940–1944)’, Modern and Contemporary France, 42 (1990), 2–16 Atkin, N., Church and Schools in Vichy France (London: Taylor and Francis, 1991) Atkin, N., ‘The challenge to laïcité:  church, state and schools in Vichy France, 1940–1944’, The Historical Journal, 35.1 (1992), 151–69 Aubert, M.-C., ‘De la banlieue parisienne à la province: la gestion du social dans la première moitié du XXe siècle:  singularité ou modèle?’, in E. Bellanger (ed.), Villes de Banlieues (Paris: Créaphis, 2008), 97–108 Aubry, J., La Carence des soins maternels (Paris: PUF, 1955) Backeroot, G., ‘Les centrales électriques dans le nord de la France’, Annales de Géographie, 32.175 (1923), 65–7 Baldoli, C. and A. Knapp, Forgotten Blitzes:  France and Italy under Allied Air Attack, 1940–1945 (London: Continuum, 2012) Barenbaum, J., V. Ruchkin and M. Schwab-Stone, ‘The psychosocial aspects of children exposed to war:  practice and policy initiatives’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45.1 (2004), 41–62 Bartov, O., ‘Martyrs’ vengeance:  memory, trauma and fear of war in France, 1918–1940’, in J. Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940:  Reassessments (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn, 1998), 54–84 Bartov, O., Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Baruch, M.-O., Servir l’Etat Français: l’administration on France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997) Baudelaire, C., ‘The painter of modern life’ (1863), in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. J. Mayne (London: Phaidon, 2006) Baughan, E., ‘ “Every Citizen of Empire Implored to Save the Children!” Empire, internationalism and the Save the Children Fund in inter-war Britain’, Historical Research, 86.231 (2012), 116–37 Baumann, T. and D. M. Segesser, ‘Shadows of total war in French and British military journals’, in R. Chickering and S. Förster (eds.), The Shadows of Total War:  Europe, East Asia and the United States, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 197–222

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Bibliography Bell, P. M. H., A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (London: Saxon House, 1974) Benjamin, W., ‘The storyteller:  reflections on the work of Nicolai Leskov’, in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) Benteli, M., D. Jay and J.-P. Jeancolas, ‘Le cinema français:  thèmes et public’, in R. Rémond and J. Bourdin (eds.), La France et les français en 1938–9 (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1978), 27–41 Berger, J., ‘Trauma and literary theory’, Contemporary Literature, 38.3 (1997), 569–82 Berntsen, D. and D. Thomsen, ‘Personal memories relating to historical events: accuracy and clarity of flashbulb memories relating to World War II’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134.2 (2005), 242–57 Bertaux, D., ‘From the life history approach to the transformation of sociological practice’, in D. Bertaux (ed.), Biography and Society (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), 29–45 Bertaux, D. and P. Thompson (eds.), Pathways to Social Class (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Besselièvre, J.-Y., ‘La défense passive en France, 1930–1944: l’exemple de Brest’, Revue historique des armées, 4 (1998), 97–103 Besselièvre, J.-Y., ‘Les bombardements de Brest (1940–1944)’, in M. Battesti and P. Facon (eds.), Les Bombardements alliés sur la France durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale: stratégies, bilans matériels et humains (Vincennes: Cahiers du CEHD no. 37, 2007), 103–24 Bezançon, A. (with A. Gaye and G. Caillet), Histoire de Boulogne-Billancourt (Boulogne-Billancourt:  Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt and Éditions Joël Cuénot, 1984) Bordeaux, M., La Victoire de la famille dans la France défaite (Paris: Flammarion, 2002) Bougeard, C., La Bretagne d’une guerre à l’autre (Paris: Éditions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 1999) Bourdieu, P., ‘Cultural reproduction and social reproduction’ in R. Brown (ed.), Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change (London: Tavistock, 1970), 71–112 Bourke, J., Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago, 2005) Bowles, B. C., ‘Newsreels, ideology, and public opinion under Vichy: the case of La France en Marche’, French Historical Studies, 27.2 (2004), 419–63 Bowles, B. C., ‘“La Tragédie de Mers-el-Kébir” and the politics of filmed news in France, 1940–1944’, The Journal of Modern History, 76.2 (2004), 347–88 Bozzoli, B., ‘Interviewing the women of Phokeng’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 145–56 Brancaccio, M. T., ‘From “deportation pathology” to “traumatismes psychiques de guerre”:  trauma and reparation in post-war France (1940s–1990s)’, in J. Withuis and A. Mooij (eds.), Politics of War Trauma:  The Aftermath of

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Index

Agache, Lucien (interviewee) 62, 124, 199, 203, 208, 224 Agache, Sonia (interviewee) 20, 58–9, 70, 77, 78, 113, 115, 119–20, 124, 126, 142, 158, 200, 204, 216 air raid siren see siren air raids, allied 3–4, 12–13, 15–16, 18–19, 102–4, 148, 150, 151, 173, 176–7, 223 Circus raids 18, 102 destruction caused by 19, 120–3, 129–30, 133 excitement about 80, 92, 93, 113 fear of 9, 10–11, 72, 79, 89, 96–9, 115, 208, 215–16 sensory experience of 92–5 sociability during 112–14 on V-Weapon launch sites 3, 103 Vichy’s response to 104–6 airmen, Allied 39, 126, 170, 174, 177, 178, 200 alarm, air raid see siren allocations (welfare allowances) for refugees 106–7, 141, 143–4 sinistrés 106–7 America see United States of America Americans, French attitudes towards 111, 174–5, 177, 183, 186, 190, 196, 197–9, 202 anti-aircraft guns (DCA – Défense contre avions) 13, 55, 87, 92, 94, 149, 154, 177, 200, 221

anti-Semitism 3, 169, 171, 186, 205, 209, 212 area bombing of France 15, 102, 105, 150 armistice 2, 147 Associations des sinistrés 141 Atkin, Nicholas 7, 176, 188 Aubrée, Serge (interviewee) 16, 61, 70, 81, 91, 93, 94, 95–6, 114, 115, 123, 128, 154, 157, 158, 159, 190–1, 193, 203, 205, 213, 214, 215, 224 Aulnoye 20, 94, 113, 201, 215 Babar the Elephant 185–7 see also BBC French Service de la Bachellerie, Christian (interviewee) 14, 35–6, 56, 58, 59, 60, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79, 92, 112, 123, 124, 130, 157, 189, 190, 191, 198, 199, 215, 220 Baldoli, Claudia 36, 68 Battle of the Atlantic 3, 15, 102 see also U-boat bases Bauwens, Bernard (interviewee) 14, 90, 92, 95, 96, 123, 127, 132–3, 157, 159, 189, 191, 198, 216 BBC French Service 172–5, 184–5, 190, 207 Fifteen Minutes for French Children (Quart d’Heure des Petits Enfants de France) 184–8

v 256 v

Index French speak to the French (Les Français parlent aux Français) 185, 189 see also Babar the Elephant; Cendrars, Miriam; Duschene, Jacques; Marin, Jean Belleuvre, Robert (interviewee) 14, 37, 61, 67–8, 70, 77–8, 128, 132, 157, 158–9, 189, 190, 197, 216, 218 Bereavement 20, 90, 124, 178, 204, 211 Berlin 174, 196 blackout 55, 70, 71, 72, 213 Blitz on Britain 2, 175, 205 spirit 130, 159, 219 bomb policy, Allied 3–4, 102–4 bomb shelters see shelters; Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter (Brest) bombed-out see sinistrés Bomber Command 3, 15, 103, 121 Bordeaux 3, 15 Boris, Georges 184 Boulogne-Billancourt air raids on 12–13, 88, 90, 92, 95, 102, 103, 108 civil defence in 67, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 110, 177 destruction in 120, 121, 122, 130, 139, 142 evacuation of children from 148, 149–50, 151, 152, 153–4 industry in 11, 59 see also Morizet, André; Colmar, Robert; Renault Bramé, Cécile (interviewee) 9–10, 16, 59, 61, 63, 80, 90, 91, 95, 112, 124, 137–8, 145, 154–5, 159, 189, 206, 214, 224 Brest air raids on 15–16, 91, 93, 96, 102, 104, 114, 154–5, 176, 177 civil defence in 55, 56, 69, 70, 71,

72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 108, 110 destruction in and of 121, 123, 124, 125, 138, 173, 202, 219 evacuation of population 136, 137, 143, 144–6, 148, 149, 150–1, 153, 154–5 liberation of 16, 137, 190–1 see also Comité Lyon-Brest; Eusen, Victor; Le Gorgeu, Victor; Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter de Brinon, Fernand 104 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) see BBC French Service British, French attitudes towards 76, 104, 167, 169–72, 174, 176, 177, 186, 190–1, 196–200, 207 Brown, Penny 7, 185 de Brunhof, Jean 185 Brunius, Jacques 175 Brussels 18, 148 Caen 21–2, 191 Cadiou, Yvette (interviewee) 94, 144–5, 150, 156, 213, 215, 224 Cambrai 1, 20, 58, 63, 77, 88, 111, 113, 124, 128, 141, 157, 200, 211 Caniot, Jean (interviewee) 37, 80, 94, 113, 126, 139, 189, 198, 200, 203, 204, 208, 215, 217, 224 Carles, Fernand 18, 109, 152, 176 Carlton Gardens (Free French headquarters in London) 185 Catholic Church 36 Catholic school 1, 136 Cendrars, Miriam 184–5, 186, 194 censorship 56, 125, 148, 169, 172–3, 184, 191 Chapalain, Yvette (interviewee) 16, 57, 58, 63, 79, 89, 96, 136, 138, 153, 154, 155–6, 158, 159, 190, 191, 199, 200, 213, 214–15, 224 charity 105, 141, 145, 146, 150, 156, 158, 220 see also Secours National

v 257 v

Index children age of 6, 42, 60, 75, 79, 89, 90, 97, 99, 113, 115, 124, 131, 133, 153, 157–8, 183, 190–1, 208, 215 and agency 8, 79, 92, 96, 99, 101, 111, 115, 128, 133, 157–8, 188, 189, 207, 208, 217–19 in history 6, 7, 8, 9, 217 and trauma 6–7, 10–11, 158 Vichy policy towards 7, 9, 183, 219 in war 6–7, 10–11, 216 see also evacuation Churchill, Sir Winston 1, 19, 104, 170 cinema 53, 55, 128, 132, 158, 168, 189, 216, 218 Cité des cheminots (Lomme) see Railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance) Citroën 12, 102, 199, 209 Civil defence 55, 68–79, 107–10, 129, 132–3, 177 see also blackout; shelters; gas masks civilian exodus of 1940 4, 77, 80, 136, 139, 143, 147, 150, 151, 203, 221 clandestine press 172–5 Cobb, Richard 18 collaboration 2, 3, 18, 39, 104–5, 140, 167–8, 169, 171–8, 184–7, 189–92, 201, 205–7, 209, 212, 220, 223–4 collective memory see memory Colmar, Robert 12 colonies de vacances 149, 152 Comité Lyon-Brest 105, 146, 150 Comité Ouvrier de Secours Immédiat (COSI) 36, 129, 140–1 commemoration 2, 21, 57, 214, 222, 223, 225 Coppin, Jeannine (written account) 141, 152 Courrier de l’Air, Le (newspaper) 173, 174 Cousteaux, Andréa (interviewee) 33,

72, 75, 77, 79, 89–90, 113, 114, 124, 127, 137, 157–8, 159, 189, 198, 200, 202, 219, 224 Creuse 150–1 Daily Mail 14, 61, 196 Daladier, Edouard 69, 139 Darlan, Admiral François 104 Darnand, Joseph 104 D-Day see landings, Allied Déat, Marcel 104, 140, 167 death 1–2, 5, 125–9, 172, 200, 204, 206, 218–19 Défense contre avions (DCA) see anti-aircraft guns défense passive/Défense Passive see civil defence Denhez, Édith (interviewee) 1–2, 5, 20, 33, 36, 45, 58, 63, 77, 88, 90, 95, 111, 113, 124, 128–9, 141, 156, 157, 200, 202, 205, 206, 211–12 Denhez, Jean (interviewee) 2, 20, 36, 94, 113, 129, 201, 215 Dépêche de Brest et de L’Ouest, La (newspaper) 144, 145 Diamond, Hanna 4 Dombrowski-Risser, Nicole 4, 34 Doriot, Jacques 140 Downs, Laura Lee 8 Dresden 205 Dunkirk 15, 17, 148, 169, 174 Durville, Danielle (interviewee) 62, 95, 112, 114, 115, 122, 201, 203, 216, 220 Duchesne, Jacques 174, 175, 187 Dutilleul, André (interviewee) 19, 56, 60, 72, 77, 91–2, 94, 95, 98, 113, 126, 128, 130, 157, 159, 198 Dutilleul, Josette (interviewee) 19, 37, 72, 74–5, 88, 89, 92–3, 96, 111, 113, 114, 125, 130, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159, 199, 200, 201, 203, 213, 216, 224

v 258 v

Index Eden, Sir Anthony 19, 209 Empire, French 55, 220 Entr’aide see solidarity, French Équipes nationales 131 see also youth Eusen, Victor 15, 16, 145 evacuation 7, 8, 10–11, 73, 108, 110, 136–7, 147–60, 213, 224 see also allocations; civilian exodus of 1940 Exode see civilian exodus of 1940 Fagard, Marguerite (interviewee) 35 family bombing, preparations for 71–9 memory 2, 57, 58, 60, 126 separation 7, 9–10, 16, 45, 90, 136, 142, 152–4, 187, 205, 224 Vichy policy on 9 see also fathers; mothers; siblings fathers 87, 89, 90, 94, 111, 112, 119, 124, 126, 130, 142, 144, 145, 190, 196, 211 and défense passive 71, 75 and First World War 57, 58, 78, 79 messages on the BBC from 185 mobilisation of 61, 62, 203 see also family Fifteen Minutes for French Children see BBC French Service film see cinema, newsreel  Finistère 15, 55, 76, 136 fire-fighting 123, 130 see also civil defence First World War 18, 40, 53, 56–60, 64, 67, 78, 79, 139, 147, 184, 204 Fishman, Sarah 8 Fives 17–19, 110, 121, 124 Flak see anti-aircraft guns Flandin, Pierre-Étienne 69 Fogg, Shannon 4 Fondation Guynemer 151 food 1, 40, 106, 136, 139, 140, 143, 144, 149, 158, 219

hunger 58, 203, 205, 216, 224 rationing 1, 6, 105, 110, 130, 143, 145, 149, 153, 154, 203 Foreign Office (British) 103, 105, 176, 199 Français parlent aux Français, Les (radio programme) see BBC French Service France Libre see Free French France (newspaper) 173 France Socialiste, La (newspaper) 171 Free French 3, 172, 185, 186–7, 199 French army 53, 55, 56, 69, 147, 172, 215 French speak to the French, the (radio programme) see BBC French Service French State see Vichy regime Freud, Anna 11 Fulbrook, Mary 33, 34, 38, 41 funerals 105, 106, 132 gas mask 20, 33, 55–6, 70, 73, 75–9 see also civil defence gas, poison see gas mask de Gaulle, Charles 3, 103, 172, 185, 189, 190 Gee (RAF navigational aid) 13, 103 gender 6, 7, 37, 131, 185 and interviewees’ memories of bombing 60, 79, 191, 192 Germans attitudes towards 167, 176, 177, 178, 200–2, 206, 208, 224 fear of 9, 54, 57, 59–60, 78, 203 invasion of France 11, 59, 71 military action 3, 15, 18, 19, 67, 102–3, 222 occupation of France 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 58, 71, 108–10, 148–9, 151 propaganda 53, 104, 167–9, 184, 189–90, 207 see also Todt organisation

v 259 v

Index Gildea, Robert 4 Girardon, Henri (interviewee) 31, 32, 58, 59, 60, 80, 88, 111, 113, 188, 200, 201, 204, 206, 215, 217, 224 Gneisenau 15, 120 Gnôme-Rhone 102 God 36, 96, 158, 217–19 Guéhenno, Jean 176 Haigneré, Pierre (interviewee) 19, 87–8, 89, 97, 122, 123, 125, 130, 133, 134, 142, 155, 156, 157, 191, 198, 216, 225 Halbwachs, Maurice 38 Halls, W.D. 7 Hamburg 10, 205 Handourtzel, Rémy 7 Harding, Jenny 35 Hellemmes 17–18, 19, 56, 58, 59, 60, 70, 72, 74, 77, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 101, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 119, 121, 122, 123, 126, 130, 142, 153, 156, 157, 158, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 213, 222 Henriot, Philippe 104, 167, 169 Hérold-Paquis, Jean 167, 168–9, 172, 196, 209 Heuzé, Monique (written account) 36 Hitler, Adolf 2, 54, 69, 187 Hoffman, Stanley 104 Holocaust 7, 45, 206, 224 see also anti-Semitism Huelgoat 144–5 L’Humanité (newspaper) 174 hunger see food Italy 32, 36, 68, 187 Japan 187 Jean-Bart, Michel (interviewee) 19, 58, 88, 97, 98, 156, 157, 201, 212, 216, 218, 224 Jews 3, 7, 105, 140, 205, 224 see also anti-Semitism

Joan of Arc 169, 172, 174, 186 Knapp, Andrew 23, 36, 68 La Chapelle 14, 36, 56, 115, 157, 188, 191, 196–7, 214 La Pallice 3, 15 Labaune, Jean (written account) 36, 188, 191 Lambézellec 14, 58, 59, 113, 201, 204 landings, Allied 1, 4, 19, 103 Langlois, Suzanne 176, 177, 178 Laval, Pierre 68, 104, 105, 108, 131, 152, 169 Le Crom, Jean-Pierre 139 Le Gorgeu, Victor 15, 55, 144, 145 Le Roy, Yves (interviewee) 16, 80, 91, 93, 125, 153, 154, 202, 224 Le Turquais, Henri (interviewee) 16, 72, 75, 91, 93, 112, 150, 153, 155, 215, 224 leaflets, propaganda 170, 171 Leclercq, Bernard (interviewee) 36, 183, 188, 198, 201, 215, 224 Leclercq, Thérèse (interviewee) 20, 36, 60, 89, 95, 97, 101–2, 111, 115, 122, 123–4, 134, 142, 158, 159, 183, 198, 201, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217, 224 Lee, Daniel 3, 7 Lemaître, Simonne (written account) 112 Lezennes 113, 114, 216 liberation anticipation of 2, 190–1, 208 bombing and 4, 175, 176, 178, 188, 190, 200, 202, 204, 206, 215 memory of 16, 214–15 Lille air raids on 11, 18–19, 94, 97, 102, 104, 120, 121, 126 civil defence in 55, 69, 71, 73, 74–7, 109, 110, 130, 132 destruction in 120–1, 125, 138

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Index evacuation of children from 151–2 industry 17 see also Brussels; Carles, Fernand; Fives; Hellemmes; Lomme; Lille-Délivrance; railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance); Transportation Plan Lille-Délivrance (station) 11, 17, 18, 19, 92, 97, 120, 125, 130, 152, 155, 157, 212 see also railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance) Loire-Inférieure 149 Loir-et-Cher 146, 150 Lomme 17–20, 87–8, 97–8, 126, 198 see also railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance) London 3, 104, 159, 167, 171, 173, 175, 184, 185, 189, 196, 205 Lorient 3, 8, 15, 102, 103, 104, 105, 110, 148, 150, 175, 178, 219 Luftwaffe 80 Lyon 105, 146, 147, 150 Maginot Line 55, 56, 147 Marin, Jean 184 Marion, Paul 169, 171 Marseille 131, 147 Martin, Michèle (interviewee) 14, 58, 59, 74, 77, 78, 89, 90–1, 92, 94, 96, 111, 152–5, 157, 191, 205, 213, 215, 216, 224 Martyrdom 169, 172, 175 Masse, Maurice (interviewee) 35, 37, 189 memory autobiographical 31, 35, 40, 41–2 collective and shared 2, 21, 38–41, 99, 115, 212, 221 see also commemoration; oral history Ministry of Education 147 Ministry of Propaganda 169

Ministry of the Interior 69, 105, 110, 147 Morizet, André 12, 15, 71, 150 Morvan, Yves see Marin, Jean Moscow 171 mothers 1, 5, 60, 124, 127–8, 129, 206, 211–12, 213–14, 218 protection of children 77, 87, 89, 97, 101, 115, 153 risky behaviour 89, 90, 96–7, 111, 158 see also family; separation Murraciole, Jean-François 21, 39 National Revolution 3, 104, 105, 131, 133, 139, 169, 185, 220 New York 178 Newsreel 53, 54, 55, 60, 168, 169, 171, 189, 190 see also propaganda Nièvre 150 Nora, Pierre 32 Nord 17–20, 58, 60, 69, 76, 109, 147, 148, 176, 183, 198–9 Norden bombsight 102, 198 Normandy 4, 103, 153, 155, 219 Oberlé, Jean 173 Operation Crossbow 103 oral history composure 145, 168, 200, 204, 206, 214 in France 32 and (inter)subjectivity 34–5, 37 and memory 32–3, 39, 41–2, 192, 212, 223, 225 methodology 35–6 and narrative 31, 40, 42, 44, 67–8, 101, 127, 136, 137–8, 145, 159, 168, 202, 206, 214–15 and representativity 35–6, 40 and transcription 37–8 Paris 13, 14, 18, 36, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 71–2, 73, 76, 77, 80, 88, 92, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 126,

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Index Paris (cont.) 137, 138, 140, 142, 147, 149, 150, 153, 157, 167, 168–9, 177, 196, 200, 203, 205, 214 see also La Chapelle; Seine (département) Parti populaire français (PPF) 140 Patronages (church-run youth clubs) 91 Paxton, Robert 104 Pétain, Marshal Philippe 2–3, 15, 68, 104, 105, 131, 139, 167, 169, 184, 185, 187 Pochart, Jean (interviewee) 16, 59–60, 62, 64, 70, 75, 93, 94, 111, 115, 123, 125, 126–7, 153, 154, 190, 198, 215 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) 43–4 see also trauma Potter, Max (interviewee) 14, 36, 56, 61, 77, 78, 80, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 111, 113, 115, 126, 137, 157, 188, 189, 196, 200, 206, 214, 216, 217, 224 prayer 36, 88, 89, 95–6, 97, 99, 218 prisoners of war French 2, 14, 44, 62, 140, 141, 146, 203–4, 220, 224 Propaganda Abteilung 168, 169, 184 propaganda 9, 59, 105, 167–8, 197, 201, 202, 207–9, 217, 220 anti-Allied 146, 149, 168–72, 197–8, 206, 207 for children 184–8 pro-Allied 172–5, 202, 207 Proud, Judith 7 public opinion 176–8, 192–202 see also BBC French Service; films; leaflets; Marion, Paul; radio public opinion see Americans, French attitudes towards; British, French attitudes towards; Germans attitudes towards; propaganda

Quart d’heure des petits enfants de France see BBC French Service radio 64, 167, 168–9, 171, 174, 181, 184–5, 188–9, 191, 196, 209 see also BBC French Service railway network, bombing of see Transportation plan railway workers 87, 173, 201 see also railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance) railway workers’ housing estate (Lille-Délivrance) 18, 19, 87–8, 98, 122, 123, 130, 133, 142, 156, 178, 191, 218 Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) 140 rationing see food Recouvrance 14 Red Cross 109, 146, 148 refugees 16, 34, 61, 106, 136–7, 139, 140, 142, 143–6, 155, 156, 158, 159, 220, 222, 223, 224 religion see Catholic Church; Catholic school; God; martyrdom; patronages; prayer Rémeur, Lucienne (interviewee) 16, 96, 112, 213, 218 Renault (factory) 12, 13, 14, 41, 90, 95, 96, 102, 103, 110, 120, 125, 127, 129, 142, 150, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 191–2, 216, 220 Rennes 131, 144 reprisals 2, 209, 212 resistance 3, 12, 172, 174, 176, 184, 187–8, 214, 221 memory and commemoration of 2, 32, 39, 40, 45, 205, 212, 223 see also clandestine press; de Gaulle, Charles; Free French Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 197 Rouen 170, 178, 218 Rousso, Henri 39 Royal Air Force (RAF) 3, 13, 19, 37,

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Index 97, 102, 104, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 197–8 Russia see USSR Sadi-Carnot bomb shelter 15, 16, 108, 112, 213, 218 Saint-Marc (Brest) 14 Saint-Nazaire 3, 15, 219 Saint-Pierre Quilbignon (Brest) 14, 15, 79, 91 Sarthe 145, 146, 150, 155 Save the Children 151 Scharnhorst 15, 120 Schumann, Maurice 189 searchlight 92, 93, 154, 200, 223 Secours National 36, 109, 129, 139, 140, 146, 148 Seine (département) 12, 108, 131, 142, 143, 150, 156 Semaine, La (newspaper) 171 Service d’Aide aux Localités Sinistrés (SALS) 108, 156 Service Interministériel de Protection contre les Événements de Guerre (SIPEG) 105, 107, 108, 148 shelters 9, 15, 16–17, 20, 43, 45, 55–6, 67–8, 70, 73–5, 79, 80, 87–92, 95–8, 108–15, 119, 127, 128–9, 148, 152, 156, 173, 177, 213–14, 216, 218, 220 Shoah see Holocaust siblings 1–2, 13, 20, 33, 62, 63, 87, 90, 96, 97, 101, 112, 119, 126–7, 130, 136, 142, 154–5, 158, 211 only children 127, 157–8 see also family Sinistrés 106–8, 129–31, 137, 139–46, 156 Allowances see allocations siren 55, 67, 87, 88–9, 91, 94, 101, 108, 109, 111–15, 153, 156, 177, 213, 215–16, 223 Solet, Christian (interviewee) 14, 37,

62, 77, 78, 88, 112, 124, 137, 190, 199, 203, 204, 215, 224 solidarity, French 105, 109, 130–1, 133, 137, 140, 141, 143–6, 156, 220, 223 see also Blitz spirit Spanish Civil War 53, 61, 69 Spectator, The (magazine) 174 Stratenfantinosphère (radio programme) 185 Sturdee, Jill 191 submarine bases see U-boat bases Switzerland 151 teachers 53, 113, 119, 149, 158, 188 Téméraire, Le (magazine) 184, 186 Termote, Marie-Thérèse (interviewee) 20, 89, 96, 158, 216 Termote, Paul (interviewee) 20, 56, 191 Th, Madame (interviewee) 14, 72, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 95, 112, 159, 191, 215 Thomas, Claude (interviewee) 13, 53–4, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 88, 96, 123, 124, 137, 152, 159, 167–8, 183, 189, 199, 205, 207–8, 213, 224 Thomas, Michel (interviewee) 13, 43, 53–4, 57, 60, 61, 64, 70, 72, 77, 78, 80, 96, 122, 123, 124, 152, 159, 167–8, 183, 189, 197, 198, 199, 203, 205, 207–8, 213, 224 Thomson, Alistair 40, 204 threatened zones 110, 148, 150, 152 Todt organisation 14, 15 Torrie, Julia S. 4, 8 Transportation Plan 1, 4, 11, 19, 103–4, 177, 196 trauma 4, 6–7, 10–11, 33–4, 35, 43–6, 57–8, 67–8, 87–8, 90, 95, 96, 97, 99–100, 115, 126–7, 132–3, 152, 156, 157, 158–9, 192, 200, 203, 205, 211–19, 223–5

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Index U-Boat bases 3, 11, 15, 102, 103, 174–5 United States Air Army Forces (USAAF) 3, 13, 102, 177, 197, 209 United States of America (USA) 102, 104–5, 111, 171, 174–5, 177, 183, 186, 190, 196, 197–9, 202 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 175, 186, 189 Veillon, Dominique 4 Vichy regime 12, 15, 18, 103, 219, 220–1 and propaganda 167–72, 176, 183–4, 186–7 response to bombing 104–7, 110, 130–2, 133, 147, 148, 156, 221

see also Laval, Pierre; Pétain, Philippe; Secours National victimhood/victimisation 2, 31, 41, 45, 64, 141, 156, 169, 172, 175, 177–8, 187, 193, 197, 199–200, 203–7, 208, 212, 215, 220–3 V-weapons 3, 103, 202, 205 Warsaw 196 Washington 105 Wood, Nancy 32 Wylegała, Anna 8–9, 223 youth 3, 7, 14, 35, 91, 109, 131, 132–3, 146, 157, 199, 209, 219 bombsite clearance work 132–3 Zahra, Tara 7 Zones menacées see threatened zones

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